Abstract
By placing the Indian Ocean World (IOW) into the larger global histories of five major infectious diseases—malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, smallpox, and plague—this paper offers a synthetic state-of-the-field assessment of what is now known or postulated about the origins and trajectories of these diseases. Focusing in particular on the mediaeval period, the paper demonstrates the significant value of using an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach in historical epidemiology that blends palaeogenetics with more traditional historical sources to trace the possible connectivities of the five diseases into, across, and from the IOW. It argues that although the IOW has neither been included substantially thus far in global health history, nor has it generated any samples of pathogen ancient DNA (aDNA), it is nevertheless possible to begin to reconstruct the pre-modern histories and conceivable spread of these five major human diseases in and across this region of the world. As archaeology, bioarchaeology, genetics, and document-based history forge stronger alliances, this region of intense historical human activity, migration, and trade—of connectivity—must necessarily be incorporated into wider discussions of the history of global health.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For example, work on the Cairo Genizah, the repository of records from the eleventh to nineteenth centuries, documents the vast IOW trade networks of Jewish families based in Cairo, Yemen, and Mangalore (Cambridge University Library 2017).
- 3.
We assume for now that the IOW MTBC lineages were obligate human pathogens, transmitted solely from human host to human host. In the Americas, by contrast, seals brought a zoonotically transmitted strain to South America at least as early as 1000 CE; it then spread via human-to-human transmission for several hundred years before being superseded by strains brought to the New World by Europeans (Bos et al. 2014; Honap et al. 2017; Green 2017, 498–502).
- 4.
Roberts and Buikstra (2003, 130–131) note that no bioarchaeological data for TB’s pre-modern history had yet been found for the following IOW countries: all of sub-Saharan Africa, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, New Zealand, Australia, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
- 5.
The 43 Lineage 1 samples used for the major study that re-dated the MTBC (Bos et al. 2014) came from patients born in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burma, Cambodia, China, Comoro Islands, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Laos, Nepal, the Philippines, Serbia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. On the within-lineage diversity of Lineage 1, see Coscolla and Gagneux (2014, 433).
- 6.
See Thin (1891) for a map of leprosy’s late nineteenth-century distribution.
- 7.
For the recently discovered M. lepromatosis, we currently know of no distinctive signs in the body’s hard tissues that would indicate infection with this organism.
- 8.
Lineage 0 was discovered after the initial four-lineage and multiple sublineage system was created in 2005 and 2009. Some isolates previously classified as 3K have now been shown to belong to Lineage 0. Lineage 5 was differentiated from Lineage 0 in Schuenemann et al. (2018).
- 9.
Reports are usually collected when there are human outbreaks. The lack of such is no guarantee that the disease does not persist enzootically.
- 10.
Our thanks to Amy J. Vogler, Northern Arizona University, for information on these studies.
- 11.
Sussman (2011) is worthwhile in that it collects materials in translation that relate to plague in early modern India. However, our analyses diverge from his by more thoroughly drawing from the genetic studies that had already started appearing when he published, which overturn traditional classifications of the different strains of Y. pestis and allow the tracking of plague in a decisive way.
- 12.
Cairo was directly affected by the initial strike of the Black Death in the fourteenth century and by many subsequent outbreaks. The modern East African strains, in contrast, all in the 1.ANT group, shared a common ancestor with Central Eurasian strains for, perhaps, a century or more after the Black Death before splitting on a unique evolutionary path.
- 13.
Laso-Jadart et al. (2017) use human genetics to document the importation of a large number of East Africans to what is now Pakistan sometime in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Although that study does not track any disease transferal, such work may be possible in the near future.
- 14.
No other samples of pre-twentieth-century pandemic V. cholerae isolates have yet been identified, so no phylogeny extending to the pre-modern era has been attempted.
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Green, M.H., Jones, L. (2020). The Evolution and Spread of Major Human Diseases in the Indian Ocean World. In: Campbell, G., Knoll, EM. (eds) Disease Dispersion and Impact in the Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36264-5_2
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-36263-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-36264-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)