Elementary Particles: On the Trail of Marble Bones

well-preserved mummies and skeletons sometimes turn out to be a complete medical record for antiquity research. Even a few bones or teeth can tell a great deal about the suffering that once plagued the ancients. It is now known that cancer was already rampant thousands of years ago.

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Issue 13/2019

The brown conspiracy

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For the study of ancient human scourges scientists have formed their own discipline, paleopathology. Again and again archaeologists make unusual findings to these experts. Bones that are too small or too large that grew crooked. Or skulls that lack part of the upper jaw.

It was a coincidence that Julia Gresky of the German Archaeological Institute came up with the idea to find out more about such rare diseases or disabilities in the past. The paleopathologist had examined the bones of a man who died more than 6600 years ago in the region of present-day Albania. The bone substance of the 30-year-old was unusually thick, a sign of the so-called marble bone disease. The sufferers suffer from fractures quickly, although their bones have grown more compact. Gresky was looking for similar cases, but they were hard to find. The exchange with colleagues finally resulted in a whole conference on rare diseases in our times.

German Archaeological Institute / Julia Gresky

Left thigh with signs of marble bone disease

Recently, palaeopathologists, archaeologists, legal physicians, geneticists and museum experts came together in Berlin to talk about their research for the first time at a symposium. In the process, I witnessed a world of my own in which nobody finds anything morbid about passing around skull parts for a coffee and a roll during the lecture break.

A whole compendium of suffering opened up for me. One case after the other was reported, the scientists reported abortions with worst malformations, cleft palate or diseases such as the Angelman syndrome, it grows afflicted with a small head usually a large mouth with a protruding upper jaw.

Now, one could in principle ask: Why should one deal with diseases in the retrospective, which are rare in any case? The answer comes from the findings of the conference. Because in addition to the medical analyzes, the researchers also discussed how those affected could have been treated by their fellow human beings. Were they marginalized because they were sick or otherwise because they had a disability? That was surprisingly rare. Even in the Stone Age, people seem to have taken care of those affected or at least not rejected them.

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The man with the marble bone disease suffered from various fractures, but they are still well healed during his lifetime. In addition, he reached an old age for those times. Also, the funeral rites of many sufferers in the community do not allow conclusions about the fact that the injured were treated differently. Sometimes the status of disabled people seems to have even increased.

In ancient Egypt, dwarfs were sometimes buried with high ceremonial honors, show some richly decorated graves. Although they could have been of high descent, at least their handicap did not hurt them. In addition, even a special connection with the gods was said to dwarfs, so at least the corresponding iconography is interpreted. With regard to the conference, it can therefore be said that even today's society can still look its own way from our ancestors.

Because a look at the number of those affected shows: Rare diseases are rare even today. By definition, around 4 million people in Germany suffer from it and 300 million worldwide. For them, it's not always about the development of therapies that will not always be there, said geneticist Dan Bradley in Berlin. "First and foremost, people want to know what they are suffering from."

warmly

Your Jörg Römer

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Abstract

My reading recommendations this week

• That the ice of the Arctic melts, is well known from many different measurements. The extent of climate change, however, researchers have now considered from another perspective. For their study, you interviewed people from Inuit communities in northern Canada about their traditional itineraries. With surprising results.
• In the Nile, researchers have discovered an old shipwreck. Why the find is right for the Greek historian Herodotus, read here.
• At the university I once had to learn colonial Yucatecan - there is not much left of it. If you want to know how such a Central American Indian language sounds, I recommend this article including audio recording to the heart. The background: People from Mexico or Guatemala, whose languages ​​are a mystery to the authorities, are increasingly appearing at the US border.
• Pain is perceived and expressed differently around the globe. German doctors often understand patients from other cultures wrong. What to do?

• The fact that our oceans still contain unknown terrain was once again shown. Researchers have discovered more than 5,000 previously unknown mountains on the ocean floor.
• It used to be pretty inventive in making household glue. In the home of George Washington, the first president of the United States, ingredients such as bull's blood or snake slime were added to the harness's putty, researchers found.

quiz

• Where is the largest library in the world?
• What is meant by astrophysics under spaghettisation?
• Under what name is the so-called category theory still known in mathematics?

* The answers can be found at the bottom of the newsletter

Rent, build or buy? Hardly anyone still finds the suitable or affordable living space. The real estate market in Germany is going crazy. At the same time the Germans had the question "How do I want to live?" never as important as today. What are the causes, and how do we find ways out of this real estate crisis? Surprising answers are in the current SPIEGEL KNOWLEDGE "Do you already live or are you still looking for something?"

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Picture of the week

Next to a wall of glacial ice, two French explorers trek across the archipelago Madre de Dios ("Mother of God"). The Chilean government wants to apply for this archipelago in the south of the Andean state in the near future, the status of World Heritage. In the impressive karst landscape water dug a variety of caves. The Patagonian aborigines, the Kawésqar, served as burial places and sometimes as dwellings.

HO / CENTER TERRE ASSOCIATION / AFP

footnote

4,000 stars apparently move together in space only 100 light-years from Earth. Astrophysicists of the University of Vienna discovered this current when they analyzed the motion of hundreds of thousands of stars in the Milky Way using data from the space probe "Gaia". Because these suns are comparatively close, it is easy to study the lifecycles of star clusters and the gravitational field of the Milky Way.

The SPIEGEL + recommendations from science

• The cloud puzzle - with the help of artificial intelligence and new supercomputers, researchers want to finally master the biggest problem of today's climate models
• Biologists are searching for DNA traces of animals in lakes and forests to monitor biodiversity changes more closely than ever before
• Capture or shoot - a competition in Holland will test how amateur drones can be picked up from the skies and come close to passenger aircraft
• Hitler's beard - a Viennese scholar explores the symbol of evil

* Quiz answers: In London. The British Library has around 170 million media / The deformation of objects when they come too close to a black hole / General nonsense