Bio-cultural exchange and human health - past and present

Summary

There is growing concern about the impact of biological exchange on human health, the WHO correlating shifts in biodiversity with the decline of medicinal biota and the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. Paradoxically, human desire to improve health and well-being has been the very motivation behind the worldwide translocation of many species. This is, in part, because ethnomedicine tends to target preferentially species that are exotic, the belief being that geographical distance is equated with supernatural distance and that the healing power of organisms increases with their cultural remoteness.

Medicine is seldom considered in archaeological studies of biogeography but this paper will highlight the role that medico-religious beliefs have played in biological exchange. As a case-study, we present the evidence relating to the fallow deer (Dama dama dama), a species native to the eastern Mediterranean but now the most widely dispersed cervid on the planet. By contextualising the data from an international programme of genetic analyses we will argue that the ancient pan-European translocation of the fallow deer was prompted by medico-religious knowledge travelling down the Silk Road. The legacy of this exchange continues to have implications for modern human (and environmental) health.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Biological Exchange in the Anthropocene: Archaeological and Genetic Perspectives

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