Bronze Age Britons lived with 1m-long worms in their kidneys, scientists reveal - The Independent

Posted: 16 Aug 2019 12:00 AM PDT

Bronze Age Britons were infected with a number of parasites including giant kidney worms that could reach up to one metre in length, analysis of 3,000-year-old faeces has revealed.

Prehistoric people living in a settlement perched on freshwater marshes in eastern England were infected by intestinal worms caught from foraging for food in lakes and waterways, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge.

The 900BC Bronze Age settlement at Must Farm – located near what is now the fenland city of Peterborough – was made of wooden houses built on stilts above the water. A wooden causeway connected islands on the marsh and inhabitants used dugout canoes to travel along the channels.

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Three-thousand years ago, a catastrophic fire burnt the village down, but artefacts from the houses such as food, clothes and jewellery were preserved in the mud.

In this waterlogged sludge, scientists also found pieces of human faeces which contained ancient parasite eggs.

Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge's Department of Archaeology told The Independent the find has given them a fascinating insight into how common certain diseases were at the time. He said: "We can start to see that pretty much everyone had some kind of intestinal parasite.

"We have found the earliest evidence for fish tapeworm, Echinostoma worm, and giant kidney worm in Britain.

Artifacts from the houses such as food, clothes and jewellery were preserved in the mud (D Webb, Cambridge Archaeological Unit)

"These parasites are spread by eating raw aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and molluscs. Living over slow-moving water may have protected the inhabitants from some parasites, but put them at risk of others if they ate fish or frogs."

Fish tapeworms grow up to 10cm in length and live coiled up in the intestines. Echinostoma worms are much smaller – up to just 1cm in length. They cause inflammation in the intestinal lining.

The giant kidney worm is a parasitic roundworm that in humans typically infects one kidney. They have been known to reach 1m in length and their presence normally causes severe kidney fibrosis.

Scientists also found pig whipworm and Capillaria worm which probably originated from the butchery and the consumption of the intestines from other animals, although it is unlikely they caused any harm.

The waste water around the site – sometimes referred to as "Britain's Pompeii" – would have been quite stagnant because of the reed beds, therefore allowing human waste to accumulate in the channels. This would have been a good breeding ground for parasites to infect local wildlife, which could have spread to the villagers if they ate raw or poorly cooked food, according to the study published in Parasitology.

Dr Mitchell said: "They were getting most of their food from the water so they've got a completely different set of parasites to people in Dorset in the Bronze Age where you get a different pattern of diseases.

"If you have a heavy load of lots of different parasites it can lead to malnutrition and it can contribute to your death. But the aim of these parasites is to keep you alive as long as possible so they keep spreading themselves.

"So parasites in your intestines and kidneys are not designed to kill you but just to make you ill for a number of years."

As writing was only introduced into Britain centuries later with the Romans, there is little record of how these people lived.

"This research enables us for the first time to clearly understand the infectious diseases experienced by prehistoric people living in the Fens," said first author Marissa Ledger, also from Cambridge's Department of Archaeology.

Researchers found that while some of the excrement was from humans, others were from dogs. "Both humans and dogs were infected by similar parasitic worms, which suggests the humans were sharing their food or leftovers with their dogs," said Dr Ledger.

The parasites found at Must Farm tally with trends seen at other Bronze Age and Neolithic sites.

"Our study fits with the broader pattern of a shrinking of the parasite ecosystem through time. Changes in diet, sanitation and human-animal relationships over millennia have affected rates of parasitic infection," said Dr Mitchell.

However, the fish tapeworm seen at Must Farm have seen a recent resurgence in modern humans because of increasing popularity of sushi, smoked salmon and ceviche.

"We now need to study other sites in prehistoric Britain where people lived different lifestyles, to help us understand how our ancestors' way of life affected their risk of developing infectious diseases," he said.

In 2016 excavations from the site revealed that inhabitants of the settlement had a taste for high-end fashion. Excavations unearthed the earliest examples of superfine textiles ever found in Britain.

University of Cambridge archaeologists unearthed more than 100 fragments of textile, unspun processed fibre and textile yarn at the site.

Some of the yarn is of superfine quality – with some threads being just 100 microns (1/10 of a millimetre) in diameter, while some of the fabrics themselves are so finely woven that they have 28 threads per centimetre, fine even by modern standards.

When the village was flourishing around 3000 years ago, textile manufacture seems to have been a key craft practised there.

First complete Bronze Age wheel discovered at 'British Pompeii'

Tapeworm: The Tool, Nine Inch Nails and Pantera Supergroup That Never Happened! - Guns N Roses Central

Posted: 30 Aug 2019 08:13 AM PDT

Tapeworm: A Supergroup Featuring Members of Pantera, Tool, and Nine Inch Nails Almost Released an Album!

With Tool's new album hitting shelves today or music stores depending on where you buy it from, there was a period of time in the late 90's and early 2000's when members of Tool, Nine Inch Nails and Pantera all played on the same record. It was a supergroup called Tapeworm, but unfortunately nothing was released under the band's name. Instead songs were slowly the group's members respective bands. Today we take a look at that supergroup! Check it out below!

32 Years Ago Guns N' Roses Play Duff McKagan's Town of Seattle!

32 years ago Guns N' Roses were opening for the Cult across Canada and the United States and on August 30, 1987 the band stopped in Seattle to play the Paramount Theatre. Apparently audio does exist of the show if you look hard enough.

According to gnrontour

Duff's homecoming show. Axl says that he got tired of people who say 'eh' during their recent Canadian tour. Before 'You're Crazy,' Axl says that when Slash dies and is cremated, he'll burn for 3 weeks because of all the alcohol he has consumed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XssKUNSGQ2Y&t=28s

Slash Releases New Music Video for "Ghost" From His Upcoming DVD Release "Living the Dream"

Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash released yet another video from his upcoming DVD release "Living the Dream" which is due out next month. The concert was captured during Slash and the Conspirators tour in the UK earlier this year. Check it out below!

17 Years Ago Axl Rose and Company Play a Poorly Received Medley of Songs

17 years ago Axl Rose's Guns N' Roses solo project would play the MTV Video Music Awards and play a three song medley consisting of "Welcome to the Jungle", "Madagascar" and "Paradise City." The only song that sounded good live was "Madagascar", which at that time was new to the public as "Chinese Democracy" was still being worked on. It appeared Axl Rose had lost his rasp, was overweight and out of breath by the end of the performance. Today we take a look at 5 things you probably didn't know about that performance

Guns N' Roses Fan Site Has Published All the Leaked Material from Chinese Democracy This Week

The Guns N' Roses fan site Axl Rose Fae Clube has published all of the Guns N' Roses leaks this week. You can simply search for it and see for yourself or go to the Facebook page and find the link to the website. Alternatively you can just go to the Guns N' Roses Sub-Reddit and Find It there. The full list of leaks are as follows

Leak on August 13, 2019

– 2009 rehearsal of It's So Easy, no Axl vocals

Leak on August 14, 2019

-2009 Rehersal of November Rain, No axl vocals

Leak on August 24, 2019

– Hard School, Full (4:05]

Leak on August 26, 2019

-audio of TIL 09 Rehearsal

Leak on August 27, 2019

-Atlas, Prostiute, Catcher In the Rye, There Was a Time, and HS snippets

Leaks on August 28, 2019 (aka The Numbers Leaks, in order of time leaked)

– 1999 version of Prositute (version 3)

– Better quality 1999 version of Catcher In The Rye

– Alt version of 1999 I.R.S.

– 1999 version of Chinese Democracy with Josh on drums

– 1999 version of Prositute (version 2)

– Better quality 1999 version of There Was A Time

– 1999 version of Street Of Dreams (The Blues version) with Josh on drums

– Better quality version of Hard School (aka Jackie Chan and Checkmate)

– 1999 version of Going Down

– 1999 version of Riad N' The Bedouins with Josh on drums

– 1999 version of Chinese Democrary. [Leaked as Chinese Stew]

Guns N' Roses Duff Mckagan Speaks About Feeling Guilty About Guns N' Roses Success

Duff McKagan was recently interviewed by Henry Rollins (BLACK FLAG, ROLLINS BAND). The full conversation can be seen below. A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

story continued below…

On what he's learned about "humanity" from being in one of the world's biggest rock bands:

Duff: "When our band became that big band, I think I had punk rock guilt. I had this year or two of adjustment to that — 'What's my place in this thing?' I got sober in '94, and that's when I really started to become aware of a lot of things and had self-awareness, and through martial arts, I really started taking responsibility for my past actions. It really allowed me to open up my ears to other people. Touring since '94, I've done a lot of it. I've done big tours; I've done van tours; I've done every kind of tour in between. All the while, I'm reading history… [if you] read three sides of the same story, you might find the truth somewhere in between, or a truth. I go and visit these places that I read history about, and you start talking to people, and then I started talking to fans that come to the shows. You get the full stories of their life… they will tell you a lot of things about themselves, probably more than they might tell their therapist or their best friend… You're talking this all in, and you're talking to people. If I'm in any bubble at all, we're playing these massive shows, and nobody asks who you vote for. Nobody cares… We've played Kuala Lumpur or Abu Dhabi, where women with full head coverings are doing the same thing [raises fist] that the guy in Little Rock, Arkansas is doing, just rocking out. If there's any bubble, it's one of unity under rock n' roll."

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