Conquistador Contagion
A pathogen possibly responsible for one of several catastrophic sixteenth-century epidemics in Mexico has been identified in DNA taken from the teeth of several of its victims. The 1545 huey cocoliztli, or “great pestilence,” as it was called at the time in the Nahuatl language, raged through Mesoamerica 25 years after the Spanish arrived, killing tens of millions. Working with genetic material from 29 individuals buried in the only known cemetery from the 1545 outbreak, a team from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has discovered the presence of Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi C, a bacterium that causes paratyphoid fever. It’s rare today but has a high mortality rate if untreated. Max Planck’s Christina Warinner says, “People have been wondering about the cause of this epidemic for 500 years.”
Esta historia es de la edición May/June 2018 de Archaeology.
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Esta historia es de la edición May/June 2018 de Archaeology.
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ORIGINS OF PERUVIAN RELIGION
While investigating looters' holes at the site of La Otra Banda in northern Peru's Zaña Valley, archaeologist Luis A. Muro Ynoñán of the Field Museum and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru spotted carved blocks around seven feet below the surface.
ISLAND OF FREEDOM
Many of the enslaved Africans sent to Brazil beginning in 1549 were from what is now Angola, where one of the most widely spoken languages was Kimbundu.
NAZCA GHOST GLYPHS
From the 1940s to the early 2000s, geoglyphs were discovered in the Nazca Desert of southern Peru depicting animals, humans, and other figures at the rate of 1.5 per year.
COLONIAL COMPANIONS
The ancestry of dogs in seventeenth-century Jamestown offers a window into social dynamics between Indigenous people and early colonists.
BAD MOON RISING
The British Museum houses around 130,000 clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia written in cuneiform script between 3200 B.C. and the first century A.D.
DANCING DAYS OF THE MAYA
In the mountains of Guatemala, murals depict elaborate performances combining Catholic and Indigenous traditions
LOST GREEK TRAGEDIES REVIVED
How a scholar discovered passages from a great Athenian playwright on a discarded papyrus
Medieval England's Coveted Cargo
Archaeologists dive on a ship laden with marble bound for the kingdom's grandest cathedrals
Unearthing a Forgotten Roman Town
A stretch of Italian farmland concealed one of the small cities that powered the empire
TOP 10 DISCOVERIES OF 2024
ARCHAEOLOGY magazine reveals the year's most exciting finds
