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iayork t1_iuh9ec6 wrote

I don’t know of any, but the question is reasonable - only a pedantic blowhard ignorant of language would insist on “writing” as the only meaning of “record”.

Records of pandemics could include pathological evidence (like bone lesions, as seen in say the treponema lesions on T. rex bones); archaeological evidence (inhabitation followed by abrupt disappearance); and/or genetic evidence (genome sequencing of pathogens associated with skeletons, for example, as has been done for the Black Plague and leprosy in the Middle Ages).

The existence of North American pandemics immediately following European contact is well known, although the cause (probably multiple, probably including measles, smallpox, and possibly some unknown pathogens) and the extent (did they kill off 75%, 90%, 99% of the population) remain unclear. There are some written records of this as well, of course.

Otherwise I don’t know of clear evidence of prehistoric pandemics or panzootics (i.e. in non-humans). All of the record types I mentioned have been used to identify infections on a smaller scale, but I don’t know of them used for widespread disease.

But it’s possible I’ve missed some, and the question makes perfect sense to ask.

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[deleted] t1_iuhc5a2 wrote

[removed]

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iayork t1_iuhj5gx wrote

> , being ‘pedantic’ is a pretty healthy trait for a scientist is it not?

Where did this idea come from? People whose only exposure to science comes from Mrs Brown in fourth grade? Pedantry like this is the opposite of science - the ignorant and incurious sneering at a legitimate question because of their mistaken and limited understanding.

Answer the question, don’t simply snigger at the questioner, especially when you’re wrong.

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Scott_Abrams t1_iuhhaxs wrote

I don't imagine there would be anything conclusive for a variety of reasons.

By virtue of being prehistoric, it can't, by definition, be referenced by a written record. This means that any record of such a hypothetical pandemic would have to be based on residual physical evidence, which would be extremely scarce.

Pandemics are differentiated from other disease outbreaks in the sense that it has to be spread out and affect a large region. This means that to find physical evidence of disease spread over a large region, you would have to actually find multiple instances of that disease being spread over a large region. However, both bodies and pathogens naturally degrade over time so it would be extremely hard to find any physical evidence at all.

While it may be hypothetically possible for evidence of a mass dying caused by sickness (ex. while rare, a mass grave with preserved active/inert pathogens, perhaps preserved by cold conditions such as glaciers or permafrost could potentially be discovered), to assert that a pandemic had occurred, you would need to find additional evidence (other intact burial sites or other physical evidence) over a large region, which occurred at roughly the same time. An anthropological find like this would probably be worth a Nobel prize.

Herds of animals or human tribes dying out from illness is a pretty common occurrence in nature but geography and other natural barriers would've discouraged most pathogens from becoming pandemic. Diseases affecting animal populations tend to self-limit due to a variety of factors (such as geography, climate, vectors, predation, population collapse, etc.) so spreading a disease to the point that it becomes pandemic seems rather implausible in prehistoric times.

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