Tuberculosis found in human fossils 500,000 years ago

most scientists believe tb was discovered thousands of years ago, four recent human fossils found in Turkey suggest that thediseaseexisted as early as 500,000 years agoThe study, conducted by scientists from the United States, Germany, France and Turkey, was published on December 7 in the American Journal of Natural AnthropologyHomo erectus is widely believed to have migrated from Africa, and paleontologists have been searching for their remains in Turkey for decadesAlthough scientists have found 1.7 million-year-old Homo erectus fossils near Georgia, the fossils found in western Turkey have helped scientists fill in the time and geographic gaps in human evolutionBased on cranial seam closure, sinus formation and eyebrow bone size, the researchers determined that the Homo erectus fossil found was a youngmaleThey also found a small lesions in the fossil skull that matched the characteristics of tuberculosis-based soft meningitis, a type of tuberculosis that attacks the meningesPreviously, the earliest evidence of human tuberculosis was mummies from thousands of years ago in Egypt and PeruThe remains of tuberculosis in the fossils help scientists understand what early humans were like and how they adapted to new habitatsThe researchers believe that the fossils represent a darker skin color of the primitive population and migrate from low-latitude tropical regions to the northern temperate zoneThe paper's first author, John Kaboulman, explains that Homo erectus evolved in Africa, so skin tones are darker, and melanin in their skin blocks uv light, so they need more light to make vitamin D than people with lighter skin tonesStudies have shown that vitamin D from the skin is the body's first line of defense againstdisease
, and that vitamin D deficiency can damage the immune systemSo the researchers speculated that the young male after moving north, due to lack of light, vitamin D secretion was reduced, and eventually because of weakened immune function and tuberculosis Clark Larson, a paleoanthropologist at Ohio State University, said this is a very important finding because infectious diseases may reveal the new challenges faced by early humans as they migrate to temperate zones (Xu Wei)