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Posted on 11/28/2001 2:36:11 PM PST by blam

Peru faced TB 'long before European conquest'

November 28 2001 at 06:05AM

Chicago - Osteoarthritis and an infectious disease that was probably tuberculosis (TB) were common among one Peruvian tribe long before Europeans conquered South America, a study said on Wednesday.

The findings bolster the contention that infectious diseases were not brought over by the continent's Spanish conquerors, and pre-date Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of the Americas in 1492, its authors said.

"It's strange to see such a high incidence of disease. It was thought that because they were so remote the Chachapoyans would be nearly disease-free," said Gerald Conlogue, a bio-anthropologist and author of the study.

Conlogue - who based his findings on X-rays taken of some 188 mummies from the Chachapoyan tribe - found that six percent of the embalmed bodies had some form of infectious abnormalities resembling TB.

He believes the true figure may be much higher, but won't be able to test that theory until next July when he will conduct autopsies on the ancient remains.

The X-rays also showed that 22 percent of the mummies had osteoarthritis of the spine, even though most of the dead were in their teens to early 40s when they died, and osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease which typically gets worse with age.

"It's an indication that these people worked hard, possibly carrying heavy loads up the mountain," Conlogue speculated, adding that hard physical labour would "obviously put a lot of stress on the joints."

The disease appeared to have affected men and women in equal measure, Conlogue said, indicating that both sexes shared the burden of the physical work such as planting and harvesting crops on the Andean mountainside.

And the crippling condition was well advanced in at least one of the individuals at the point of death, suggesting that the individual must have been cared for by the community since he or she would not have been very mobile in the final days before death.

That reflected a level of philanthropy not often associated with ancient peoples, especially one that was renowned for its warrior reputation, said Conlogue, who presented his findings on Wednesday to the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

The Chachapoyan mummies may be up to 1 000 years old and were discovered in caves high in the Peruvian Andes in the province of Amazonias.

They were first studied 30 years ago, but no written record was left and most of the information about them has come through Incan writings.

It is thought that Chachapoyan tribe members were warriors who were eventually assimilated into the rival Incan culture.

Conlogue, an assistant professor of bioanthropology at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, X-rayed the mummified remains at the museum in the Andean village of Leymebamba where they are now kept.

He lugged a portable X-ray machine on a 40-hour bus ride to the village at 3 048 meters and hand-developed the film in a makeshift darkroom of black plastic gardening bags. - Sapa-AFP

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