ABOVE: Excavation of a house at Çatalhöyük
SCOTT HADDOW
Eggs of the intestinal parasite whipworm are present in 8,000-year-old preserved feces from people who lived in a Neolithic settlement called Çatalhöyük, in modern-day Turkey, according to a study published May 31 in Antiquity. The discovery supports the idea that a shift in human history from hunting and gathering to settling down and farming is tied to a change in the types of parasites people carried—from those that pass between wildlife hosts and humans to bugs that go from person to person.
The recovery of only one species of parasite is also reflective of the settlers’ farming lifestyle, diet, and tidiness (characterized by frequent sweeping, regular replastering of floors and walls, and taking out the trash), compared to parasitological analyses from other Neolithic settlements, which have turned up a wider variety of parasites.
“It sounds like their approach to hygiene at the ...
