Infectious disease outbreaks as contributors to socio-cultural transformations in the 2nd millennium BCE

Introduction

In recent years, rapid developments in the field of ancient metagenomics, enabled through advances in genomic sequencing and ancient DNA retrieval, have provided temporal transects of microbial diversity. These advancements have paved the way for studying human-pathogen interactions, on both the biological and cultural dimensions, far earlier than the written historical record.

Project Overview

With these tools at hand, PROTOPEST will utilize a timely opportunity for investigating the impact of infectious disease epidemics on prehistoric human societies. The project will be centered on the 2nd millennium BCE, a period of large-scale socio-cultural transformations witnessed differentially across the archaeological records of Europe, the Near East, and Asia.

Research Context

Until now, studies have focused on:

1. Environmental changes
2. Economic shifts
3. Warfare
4. Human migration

These factors have been used to explain the phenomena of the 2nd millennium. Crucially, this period bears the earliest textual evidence of infectious disease epidemics ever identified. However, their possible contribution to observed transformations, as well as their trans-regional impact beyond textual descriptions, remains largely unexplored.

Data Generation

PROTOPEST will produce extensive datasets, including:

• Ancient metagenomic data
• Pathogen genomic data
• Human genomic data

These datasets will be generated from human and animal remains across key regions of Europe, the Near East, and Central Asia.

Data Analysis

Co-analyzed alongside cultural, isotopic, paleodemographic, and palaeopathological information, these data will be used to expose the unknown landscape of Middle/Late Bronze Age epidemics across a large geographical expanse.

Multidisciplinary Framework

Our unique multidisciplinary framework will define indicators of prehistoric community responses to infectious disease outbreaks. It will also reveal how pathogens emerged and disseminated within and across human populations.

Conclusion

In this capacity, PROTOPEST will provide a deep evolutionary and cultural framework for empirically examining the diachronic challenges that pathogens have posed on human societies. This will help to gain a more holistic view of human prehistory.