Ancient Nubians Drank Antibiotic-Laced Beer

eldavojohn writes "A new analysis of millennia old mummy bones (abstract; full article is paywalled) shows high concentrations of tetracycline, which indicates empirical knowledge and use of antibiotics — most likely consumed in beer. The researchers traced the source of the antibiotics to the soil bacteria streptomyces present in the grain used to ferment the beer. Astonishingly enough, 'Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline, suggesting that they were giving high doses to the child to try and cure him of illness.' The extent of saturation in the bones leads the scientists to assert that the population regularly consumed tetracycline antibiotics knowing that it would cure certain sicknesses."

Comments

Not really, no

[shaitand]

Sometimes sick people got better after drinking beer.

How is this any different than any historical herbal remedy? They didn't need to have any more knowledge of anti-biotics than natives eating mushrooms need know the shrooms contain psilocybin.

Bacteria infected their grain, this resulted in anti-biotic beer which became a local herbal remedy or healing potion. No actual discovery of bacteria or idea WHY the remedy heals. Interesting but hardly 'astonishing'.

Re:Not really, no

[somersault]

Or maybe they just liked beer.. I'm pretty sure most people consuming large doses of beer these days aren't doing it for the health benefits.

Re:Not really, no

[shaitand]

quite possible, they could have been drowning their sick children in massive doses of beer to ease their suffering.

In the Nubians defense, 'most people consuming large doses of beer these days' aren't consuming anti-biotic beer so they don't have the opportunity to drink it for the same health benefits. Besides that, anti-biotics can be ordered in pure forms now.

Re:Not really, no

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If you've ever been to Africa, you'll know this. The reason you drink only beer, no matter your objections and thoughts on the matter is that you're relatively sure it won't infect you with an illness. Drinking water from a pond in the jungle is Russian roulette. Drinking water offered by inhabitants of a village is asking for poison.

Even today, in remote parts of Africa you drink either bottled water (which you check before you drink it), or beer. Nothing else. You just can't trust it.

And let's not talk about the food.

Re:Not really, no

[tverbeek]

If a substance is potent enough to have an effect on your health, it's a drug, and is subject to regulation by the FDA.

This reasoning is about as sound as "Of course marijuana is bad for you: it's illegal!"

Until last year tobacco was not regulated by the FDA, and I'm pretty sure the active ingredient in it was known to be "potent enough to have an effect on your health" even way back in the dark ages of 2008. To say nothing of caffeine, which is not regulated by the FDA as a drug but as a food ingredient or dietary supplement... like an "herbal".

Re:Not really, no

[John Hasler]

I doubt there was empirical testing going on here. As the parent said, the beer sometimes helped people get better so they used it.

That is empirical testing. The herbalists would have done better to stick to it. Unfortunately, they developed bogus theories.

And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri.

Well, no. Some of it is toxic.

Re:Not really, no

[asliarun]

I like what Dara O' Briain has to say about it: "Oh herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years. Indeed it has, and then we tested it all and the stuff that worked became -medicine-. And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri. So knock yourselves out."

A lot of what you said is very true - herbal medicine in general is not as systematic or scientific as modern medicine.

However, to make a blanket statement that all herbal medicine is hit-and-miss, voodoo magic, and unscientific is also distorting the truth, and based on ignorance of our past. Science is not the fiefdom of the Greco-Roman system we have been following in the last couple of hundred years. Systematic and scientific study has indeed been followed by many old cultures, albeit not to the level of sophistication that we currently follow. Nonetheless, you cannot just trash it completely.

Look at what Sushruta used to do in India in 800BC for example.

To quote the wikipedia article:

"The Sushruta Samhita contains 184 chapters and description of 1120 illnesses, 700 medicinal plants, a detailed study on Anatomy, 64 preparations from mineral sources and 57 preparations based on animal sources."

Not just medicine, he has written extensively about surgery, especially plastic surgery, and some of his techniques and instruments are still being used today.

He wasn't alone, you can also read about Charaka.

What I am basically trying to say is that the basic principles of science such as logic and experimental proof did not get magically invented a couple of hundred years ago. Most scientists in the old days were let down by a lack of infrastructure and lack of mature manufacturing processes, among other things. They were not let down because their approach was unscientific or unsystematic. Don't trash herbal medicine just because the active chemical ingredient of a herb has not been isolated (because of lack of chemical or process know-how). No system of medicine (even herbal medicine) can withstand the test of time if it was solely based on hit and trial or voodoo/magic, instead of being based on logic and method.

To put it another way, should your great grandchild trash-talk and call you a scientific neanderthal just because you used to eat fruits, vegetables, and meat instead of ingesting (isolated) protein, carb, vitamin, and fibre tablets? Forget isolating nutrients from our food, we haven't even been able to properly bio-engineer the food that we eat. Imagine how barbaric it will feel to a person 500 years from now when they realize that our generation actually needed to slaughter animals for our nutritional intake. They'll probably look at us the way we look at cannibals.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[digitig]

2: Since the reason their beer had antibiotics was due to a lucky coincidence of having soil laced with the antibiotic, did they really know about antibiotics or did they just think they had "magic beer" that cured illnesses.

Perhaps you didn't understand the bit in the summary that referred to empirical knowledge and use of antibiotics?

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[DarkKnightRadick]

What surprises is me is the complete elitism of knowledge that shows its ugly head when an article like this pops up. "Oh they didn't have modern science so they must have been complete n00bs and were just drinking 'magic beer' that sometimes helped." This is completely regardless of the fact that this is already centuries after Plato and Hippocrates or any other ancient looks into philosophy and medicine.

Could it possibly be, as you and the article suggest, that they had empirical knowledge of what they were doing? God forbid if that were true! /sarcasm

Why is this surprising anyone?

[tpstigers]

Why do modern people think everyone in the past was stupid? Is it really so much of a stretch to believe that ancient people were capable of figuring out that consuming certain substances helped cure certain ailments? They managed to figure out monumental architecture - is it so hard to believe that they could do the math and realize that drinking beer helped them feel better under certain circumstances? The fact that ancient people didn't have access to the internet doesn't mean they were idiots.

Re:I know nothing about this field of science

[marcello_dl]

In fact Science is a protocol to make the most out of observations, but empirical knowledge is the superset of experimental knowledge. Science supersedes it but empirical knowledge works for humans and animals since the dawn of time.

Besides, Science is about experimentation, publication, replication and validation of result, theories forming or being demolished because of such results.

But now?

We have NDAs, patents, trade secrets, corporate manipulation of the media,this is not the scientific process, this is a religion in disguise. "Believe our results".

To the guy dissing herbs, the origin of the medicament is irrelevant all it matters is its efficiency. If penicillin can cure and amanita muscaria can kill, natural stuff can have dramatic effects on health, obviously.

Re:What...

[fey000]

The average life expectancy we have today is significantly higher than it was back then. As such, it may well be that these Nubians never even experienced the consequences of liver damage outside a few extreme cases.

Re:Obligatory...

[sumdumass]

If it was a linux distro, it would be spelled Gnubian or Kgnubian something similar while sporting a picture of some bearded goat thing playing ball with a penguin.

Re:Either that or

[Jeppe Salvesen]

The question is then if there is a higher dose of antibiotics in the remains of those who died from disease than those who died from accidents and violence. If there is a higher concentration of antibiotics in the remains of those who died from disease, then this suggests they knew about the healing properties of their beer. After all, the body is better at defeating infections when sober than when you're hammered so not drinking beer while being ill would be a better choice had they not known of the medicinal properties of the beer.