Europe's largest Copper Age tomb: children's bones show ancient health crisis

Posted by gmays 5 days ago

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Comments

Comment by poulpy123 1 day ago

> Among them were individuals who had undergone skull surgery (trepanation)

I can imagine having a piece of my skull removed without anesthetics, disinfectants, antibiotics and pain relievers

Comment by binaryturtle 5 days ago

cloudflare blocked. :-(

Comment by rawgabbit 5 days ago

Scientists found evidence tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases ravaged the population.

Comment by jbotz 3 days ago

Actually, no. We don't know anything about the "population" because there are no attempts here to look at what percentage of living people/children were affected. We only know that of those children who died, a lot of them had had these specific indications of these specific illnesses (and we can probably assume that in many cases those were the direct or indirect cause of death).

Respiratory infections (like tuberculosis) in a population that uses indoor open fires for cooking and heat aren't exactly a big surprise; breathing indoor smoke causes chronic respiratory inflammation, which in turn weakens the immune system and makes the lungs more susceptible to infection.

Comment by binaryturtle 5 days ago

Thanks for the quick summary.

Comment by UKPakiRapeParty 3 days ago

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