Study: Seals Infected Early Americans With Tuberculosis 74
mdsolar writes that a study suggests that tuberculosis first appeared in the New World less than 6,000 years ago and it was brought here by seals. After a remarkable analysis of bacterial DNA from 1,000-year-old mummies, scientists have proposed a new hypothesis for how tuberculosis arose and spread around the world. The disease originated less than 6,000 years ago in Africa, they say, and took a surprising route to reach the New World: it was carried across the Atlantic by seals. The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, has already provoked strong reactions from other scientists. "This is a landmark paper that challenges our previous ideas about the origins of tuberculosis," said Terry Brown, a professor of biomolecular archaeology at the University of Manchester. "At the moment, I'm still in the astonished stage over this."
Re:Africa man... (Score:2, Insightful)
They haven't started any world wars, ...
It is not rational to give moral credit to people for not doing something which they were incapable of doing. Africans didn't colonize remote places because they were morally superior, but because they never developed any real civilization. Well, the Egyptians did, but sub-Saharan Africa has always been primitive, lacking the technology and social organization needed to explore the world.