Parasites in Past Civilizations and Their Impact upon Health

Piers Mitchell is trained in medicine, archaeology and medical history, and leads the Ancient Parasites Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK. Piers has been president of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, and also president of the Paleopathology Association, the worldwide organisation for the study of ancient diseases.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Near Eastern civilizations; 3. Ancient Egypt and Nubia; 4. The prehistoric peoples of Europe; 5. The Roman world; 6. Medieval Europe; 7. East Asian civilizations; 8. North American indigenous peoples; 9. South and Central American civilizations; 10. Parasites, migrations and epidemics; 11. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'This volume … challenges us to think about these civilizations without macroparasites - what would they be like day-to-day? How would their histories be different? Thinking in this way, it becomes easy to see the tremendous social and biological impacts that macroparasites had, and continue to have, on humans of the past and present.' Sophie K. Joseph, The Quarterly Review of Biology