Study of ancient British oral microbiomes reveals shift following Black Death
psu.edu
psu.edu
Using this method this study might just prove, or at least insinuate, that the survivors of the Second Plague Pandemic that earned higher incomes and could afford higher-calorie foods are in fact possibly responsible for a "wide range of chronic diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease and poor mental health".
To their credit, they won't investigate the teeth of pre-industrialized people "without the permission and collaboration of decedent populations and stakeholders".
I'm not saying nothing good will come out research such as this. It is just interesting that it contains so much irrelevant signaling.
It's obviously nonsense - so why claim it?
The part about indiginous research is kind of mad as well - "This research places unnecessary responsibilities and obligations on Indigenous communities to participate in microbiome research". We're talking about a mouth swab here.
It makes me glad I don't work in academia!
/s
When Netflix depicts indigenous European as POC, is that Blackface or Historical Accuracy or both? I am confused.
The bulk of modern Europe was covered in thick glacial ice, when it receded the "first Europeans" walked in from the south.
A number got a lot paler after many generations in the more northern parts, others less pale, and those near the Mediterranean were neither ghost white nor midnight black.
Now throw in a steady low rate of long distance trade - traders travelled, as did those enslaved and traded.
The Roman settlements in England were mainly established by people not from modern Italy, they came from across a broad part of the full Roman Empire, one fort was manned by Africans.
So - legitimately mostly white skinned people with a small percentage of every other shade. Depending very much which bit of "Europe" you're looking at.
IIRC the current theory is that genes responsible for white skin in Europe were initially introduced by farmers migrating from Anatolia and the middle east (white skin appearings somewhere there or closer to the Caucasus). They almost entirely replaced the indigenous much darker skin hunter gatherers in many areas of Europe,
> one fort was manned by Africans.
North Africans. Who were most likely more "white" back then than now (Trans-Saharan slave trade which transported millions of people from Sub-Saharan Arica wasn't a thing back then).
So .. easily confused with Swedes then?
Or as dark if not darker than (say) Greeks and therefore People Of Some Colour?
How rich was the Kingdom of Aksum and how much trade did they do with India and the Roman Empire, did they travel afar from their own land?
What of their successors, the Abyssinians, did they not once have "all the gold"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleb_of_Axum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_to_Abyssinia#/media/...
As I stated, travelling throughout Europe, through the territories of the Roman Empire, all manner of complexions could be seen, some less frequently than others - but there were certainly rich, powerful, and very dark traders from abroad along with no shortage of Mediterrian complexions.
Maybe not Swedes (who weren't exactly typical Romans) but with someone from Iberia, Italy, Sicily or Greece? Sure.
Northern Africa wasn't exactly an ethnically homogenous region either. Phoenicians were establishing colonies there for hundreds of years, there was significant contact with the Greeks and other areas in the Mediterranean (including extensive slave trade). By the time the Romans had conquered Britain many Italians had also settled there (and their descendants were likely significantly overrepresented in the legions recruited there, you had to be a citizen to join after all).
> did they travel afar from their own land
I'm not sure we have any evidence of that? But sure it's not impossible that a statistically insignificant number of people from there might have somehow ended up in Roman Britain (and considering how lucrative the Indian Ocean trade what incentives would they have had to travel to other side of the world?)
> the Abyssinians, did they not once have "all the gold"?
Maybe? Not sure how is that related?
> there were certainly rich, powerful, and very dark traders from abroad along with no shortage of Mediterrian complexions.
How is that certain? I agree about the Mediterranean, Northern Europe and the parts of the Middle East who were in close contact with the Romans with numbers of people from those areas exponentially decreasing with distance. Merchants/people from anywhere else? Extremely unlikely to end up in a distant backwater like Britain (unlike in Rome itself for instance).
Yes, the Americans and Australians should ask before taking British remains from Britain away for research in their labs. I don't see where the research is conducted but there isn't any mention of collaboration with the UK so this would involve exporting the remains.
I mean, I agree they need permission, but it’s at least a little ironic…
Some (most?) of these remains have the same order of magnitude problem to find descendants as Egyptian mummies would.
I don't understand what you mean? Why would pre-industrial Europeans not be indigenous? Because they (in Britain) partly displaced the previous Celtic inhabitants (who themselves had likely displaced others before them)?
Fine, clear it with an ethics committee, be open about what you're doing and debate the implications. But asking the descendants? That's not practical.
For the record, I've never conducted research on indigenous people - and have no plans to.
You ask the government.
I don't want to start a holy war, I understand sentimentality. But if you dug up my great grandfathers great grandfather then honestly I have absolutely no connection to the man and his body could be anywhere on earth. It's not my property and despite sharing some of my genes it's part of the earth at that point.
What once was a man merely returned to the atoms and microbes of the planet that bore it.
Otherwise the whole planet is a gravesite and we cannot farm/build or exist without unintentionally desecrating graves.
I expect better honestly.
If you need permission: who among the population can give it, and what connection could they have to what amounts to a strangers corporeal remains.
>What once was a man merely returned to the atoms and microbes of the planet that bore it.
Bones last for centuries, millennia, and longer. In fact bones are the very thing we are discussing (in the form of teeth), and they are obviously very much intact beyond your arbitrary 3 generation cutoff. So while your sentiment may be noble and erudite, it's not relevant at all.
However after 8 generations there is already so little connection left, keeping in mind 8 generations is roughly 160-240 years.
Yes, we are sentimental creatures, however if we hold that human remains are permanently sacred then we will run out of habitable space on the planet if we continue to bury our dead.
>"Held in a number of departments for display and research, over 6,000 human remains are in the care of the Museum"
https://www.britishmuseum.org/our-work/departments/human-rem...
Because there has been a rich history of Western (colonial) powers looting graves or remembrances of the dead (e.g. shrunken heads) in the past, and there are numerous legal issues being fought to this day about repatriation of human remains back to their home countries. There is no need to pile more case on the already large pile.
If it is bad for the British to take human remains from other countries, then we should apply the same logic to exporting British human remains.
And therefore are also very likely to be descendants of those people to some (possibly non insignificant extent) extent.
We (the UK) don't care. If you try to export human remains from the UK to another country (the study is being done by US and Australian universities), without the correct permissions you're going to have a bad time.
There is a rich history of everyone looting graves. This isn't a colonial vs other thing here. Sacking of places is common and still happens (see syria, afganistan & the sudans. ) We just happen to know about the stuff the western people did because they documented it and put it on display. (unlike the romans, persians, greeks, byzantines, ottermans, et al. didn't loose it to the next empire, yet.)
There used to be a bunch of TV shows where they'd routinely dig up bones and put them on shelves in storage.
Applying to exhume a body isn't that difficult in the UK either: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-an-exhumation-licence
The most relevant thing here is that the remains are being taken outside the UK (the study is being done by US and Australian universities) so you need some permission to export them.
All European people have a unique male ancestor 300 generations away. If you locate remains of that age, do you have to ask nobody or everybody? (Depending on whether it's the male ancestor of all of us, or some other male whose last descendent died long ago?)
You get the permission from whoever owns the land the graves are in, as well as the UK government.
Hacker News comments have been in a bit of an anti-academia, pro-business mood recently, so most relevant question copied below.
Imagine an (exploitative? Creative?) product launch for a probiotic yogurt made “to give you the biome of a true paleo”. We might want to ensure those whose mouths were swabbed to unlock that tag line were compensated.
> Q: What is microbiome ownership, and why is it important? Weyrich: This means that someone could own or have rights to their own bacteria. The ‘next generation’ of probiotics to support health are coming from people who donate their microbes — not yogurts or fermented foods, so establishing a framework for people to own their microbes means that they could benefit or profit from the commercialization of these microbes. This framework is important for providing equal benefits for research participants, research teams and companies that may want to commercialize someone’s microbes to make ‘next generation’ probiotics.
I'm familiar with the notion that "everything is politics" and the like, but it is a completely useless rule of thumb for everyone but undergraduate zealots and ideologues, who ultimately prefer to spend their energy defending their bias instead of looking at the data.
recently? bro this is an incubator for SV startups -- its always been that way.
I assumed from the title that the oral bacteria would reveal some preferential defense or resistance to yersinia pestis, but instead it was entirely due to the post-epidemic economies of the survivors.
This is more like the situation of beriberi crippling the imperial Japanese navy in the 1880s