Anatolia and its surroundings have been known as the places where human communities settled to live since the first periods of history. As a result, this geography, where natural resources are abundant, the soil is fertile and the weather is warm, has very favorable conditions for life. That’s why Göbeklitepe is one of the oldest settlements, that’s why our country is full of historical ruins.
Scientific studies continue on the remnants of the communities that lived in this region in the past. The information obtained in these studies also allowed us to gain a different perspective on the collapse of civilizations in the past.
Rifle, Germ and Steel proved right once again
Jared Diamond’s must-read work, Guns, Germs and Steel, attributed the colonists’ success in the Americas to germs as well as rifles and steel. The natives, whose immune system was not as developed as the Europeans until that time, and who had never encountered most diseases in Europe, could be broken by epidemics even due to diseases that did not affect the Europeans. Excavations on the Greek island of Crete show that this situation worked in a similar way in ancient civilizations.
Gunnar Neumann from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and his team, working on the remains found in the cave called Aya Haralambos on the island (his church is also in Çeşme, with the difference of Webtekno, you can learn about the artifacts in our geography in a news article), conducted various studies on the bones found in the cave. As a result of these examinations, he found traces of plague and typhoid diseases.
Until now, climate change and the breakdown of alliances were blamed for the collapse of ancient civilizations. According to the researchers, the new findings also reveal the impact of diseases. Because it seems that there were epidemics on the island long before we know.
Typhoid and plague, which do not leave traces on bones under normal conditions, were discovered because they were primitive and extinct versions. The research was published in the journal Current Biology.
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