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An international team of archaeologists has discovered trichococcal eggs 8,000 years old (Trichuris trichiura) in coprolites (fossilized stools) from Çatalhöyük, a prehistoric settlement inhabited between 7100 and 5600 BC.
It is an artistic impression of Çatalhöyük. Image credit: Dan Lewandowski.
Çatalhöyük is one of the largest and best preserved Neolithic sites in the world. It is located southeast of the modern Turkish city of Konya, about 145 km from Mount Hasan.
The population of Çatalhöyük consisted of primitive farmers who cultivated crops such as wheat and barley and raised sheep and goats.
The toilets were invented for the first time in the 4th millennium BC in Mesopotamia, 3,000 years later than when Çatalhöyük flourished.
It is believed that the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük either went to the dump to open their bowels, or carried their excrement from their homes to the discard pile in a container or basket for disposal.
"We expected that this put the population at risk of contracting diseases through contact with human excreta, and explained why she was at risk of contracting whipworm," said Marissa Ledger, a researcher at the US Department of Health. Archeology of the University of Cambridge.
"Since writing was invented only 3,000 years after the time of Çatalhöyük, people were not able to record what had happened to them during their lives. This research allows us for the first time to imagine the symptoms experienced by some of the prehistoric people living in Çatalhöyük who have been infected by this parasite. "
To search for intestinal parasite eggs, Dr. Ledger and colleagues used microscopy to study Çatalhöyük's coprolites. Samples dated from 7 100 to 6150 BCE.
To determine whether the coprolites extracted from the search came from human or animal stools, they were analyzed for sterols and bile acids. This analysis demonstrated that the coprolites were of human origin.
Further microscopic analysis showed that whipworm eggs were present in two of the coprolites, demonstrating that people from the prehistoric village were infected with this intestinal parasite.
"It was a special time to identify parasite eggs over 8,000 years old," said Dr. Evilena Anastasiou of Cambridge University.
"We now need to find ancient feces from prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups in the Near East to help us understand how this lifestyle change has affected their diseases," said Dr. Piers Mitchell, also of Cambridge University.
The results were published today in the journal antiquity.
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Marissa L. Ledger et al. Parasitic infection in the nascent agricultural community of Çatalhöyük. antiquity, published online May 31, 2019; doi: 10.15184 / aqy.2019.61
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