Tag: Plague
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How disease shaped humanity’s past
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DISEASE historians have a problem. While examining samples of ancient human DNA, geneticists have come across genes belonging to the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, revealing that it ravaged Eurasia 5000 years ago. That’s nearly 3500 years before the “first plague”, also known as the Justinian plague, after the Roman emperor of the day. What to…
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Going viral
FIRST the pharaoh changed his name, from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten. Then he decreed that a new capital should be built far away from the old one. And in this city, one god should be worshipped, forsaking all others: the sun god Aten… This article first appeared in New Scientist on 19 July 2022. To continue…
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On pandemics and inequality
A LOT has been written about how this pandemic is exacerbating social inequalities. But what if it’s because our societies are so unequal that this pandemic happened…? This article first appeared in The Guardian on 12 April 2020. To continue reading, click here.