Post by wearwolf on Sept 11, 2015 12:32:46 GMT
Scientists have identified the UK’s earliest case of rickets – from 5,000 years ago.
A team of researchers from Durham and Bradford universities spotted the disease, caused by a lack of Vitamin D, in a Neolithic skeleton unearthed on the Scottish island of Tiree, part of the Inner Hebrides.
The earliest identified case was previously from Roman Britain, but this skeleton was from between 3,340 and 3,090 BC.
It belonged to a woman aged 25 to 30, around 4ft 10ins tall, short even by Neolithic standards, and with a deformed breastbone, ribs, arms and legs.
Scientists are baffled as to why the woman was short of Vitamin D.
Dr Janet Montgomery, from Durham University, said:
“While there are many questions left unanswered, particularly because the other skeletons from the burial site aren’t available for detailed analysis and Neolithic burials are only rarely excavated elsewhere in the Hebrides, we can only speculate as to why a disease linked to urban deprivation emerged so early in a farming community.
“It seems especially poignant that these communities had some cultural aversion to eating fish, and yet that simple addition to her diet may have prevented the disease.”
Source + Durham Times, 11 Sept 2015
A team of researchers from Durham and Bradford universities spotted the disease, caused by a lack of Vitamin D, in a Neolithic skeleton unearthed on the Scottish island of Tiree, part of the Inner Hebrides.
The earliest identified case was previously from Roman Britain, but this skeleton was from between 3,340 and 3,090 BC.
It belonged to a woman aged 25 to 30, around 4ft 10ins tall, short even by Neolithic standards, and with a deformed breastbone, ribs, arms and legs.
Scientists are baffled as to why the woman was short of Vitamin D.
Dr Janet Montgomery, from Durham University, said:
“While there are many questions left unanswered, particularly because the other skeletons from the burial site aren’t available for detailed analysis and Neolithic burials are only rarely excavated elsewhere in the Hebrides, we can only speculate as to why a disease linked to urban deprivation emerged so early in a farming community.
“It seems especially poignant that these communities had some cultural aversion to eating fish, and yet that simple addition to her diet may have prevented the disease.”
Source + Durham Times, 11 Sept 2015