Cold Sores dated to the Bronze Age

Angela

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and the advent of kissing, brought to us perhaps by the steppe people.

See:
https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2022/0728/1312650-spread-of-cold-sores-traced-back-to-bronze-age/

Well, this is something brought to us by the migration of steppe peoples which I can whole heartedly appreciate. :)

"[FONT=&quot]The spread of the modern-day cold sore has been traced back to the Bronze Age and linked to the advent of kissing in a new DNA study.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Research suggests the HSV-1 strain of the herpes virus arose in the wake of vast migrations of people from Eurasia to Europe around 5,000 years ago.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The migration led to both denser populations, which drove up rates of transmission, and new cultural practices being imported from the east, including kissing, according to the study.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Scientists at the University of Cambridge leading the research have become the first to uncover and sequence ancient genomes of the virus, which currently infects some 3.7 billion people worldwide."

"Facial herpes is spread orally, and the researchers point out the earliest known record of kissing comes from a Bronze Age manuscript from South Asia.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The custom may have spread westward along with migration and coincided with the spread of HSV-1, according to the study.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Centuries later, the Roman Emperor Tiberius would try to ban kissing at official functions to prevent disease spread – a decree that researchers believe may have been herpes-related.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]However, for most of human prehistory, the strain would have been passed down "vertically" – from infected mother to newborn child.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Co-senior author Dr Christiana Scheib, research fellow at St John's College, Cambridge, and head of the ancient DNA lab at Tartu University, said: "Every primate species has a form of herpes, so we assume it has been with us since our own species left Africa."[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"However, something happened around 5,000 years ago that allowed one strain of herpes to overtake all others, possibly an increase in transmissions, which could have been linked to kissing."

Can't say the same for the herpes part, of course.[/FONT]
 
This is pretty interesting stuff... but are they saying kissing was not a thing before then?? I find that very hard to believe. Seems like a natural almost animal kind of behavior. Do not all cultures do it?
 

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