The ancient peoples did not have the luxury of the hermetic containers to keep insects out of the food, screens to keep insects out of the house or a local pest control specialist who could help keep their home free of pests. These threatening pests could cause much more than an inconvenience. They could spoil food stores or ruin crops.
However, archaeologists have discovered that ancient people had their own ways to deal with insects, rodents and other discomfort. Ancient people were not about to let these pests ruin their crops or their lives.
Ancient pest discomfort
Archaeologists have two ways in which they can identify how pests disturb ancient people. The first is through cultural materials as works of art that represent what the ancients found annoying and how they addressed the problem, says Linda Evans, Egyptologist specialized in environmental history and associated professor at the University of Macquarie in Australia.
“The images on the walls of the tombs occasionally show workers who try to control small birds that attack their fruit trees or quail that have invaded their fields,” says Evans.
Similarly, the ancient Egyptian medical texts give advice on how to deal with lice and fleas, indicating that people at that time found that both are a discomfort. Complaints about pests are also documented in literature as “the satire of the trades”, which Evans mentions the “inopportune effect of biting insects” as mosquitoes and sandflies.
Archaeologists can also learn about the control of old pests through physical remains. Evans says that the discovery of grain stores has allowed scientists to understand that the ancient Egyptians were upset by grain pests such as gorgy.
The physical remains, of course, also include human remains, and the unearthing of ancient corpses has allowed researchers to learn what drown the dead while still lived. Scientists, for example, have found human remains in what is now Brazil that were covered with lice or nits dating from 10,000 years. Mummies can be particularly useful to reveal which old people aquilated while living, but also after they died.
“Mummified human body tissue analysis has detected the presence of Plasmodium falciparumThe blood parasite caused by malaria transmitted by mosquitoes, ”says Evans. “The eggs and worms preserved from the intestinal parasites, such as tapeguras, round worms and Guinea worms, have confirmed their infestation of the living, while the skin, meat and bone beetles, and flies pups show how bodies They were attacked by other mallites after the death of death. . ”
Read more: These 5 ancient civilizations treasured their pets
Face creatures
The discovery of archaeological remains has helped scientists better understand how the ancients faced annoying creatures. Tools such as Ancient Egyptian liceFor example, they have been identified. These double -sided combs had narrow and tight teeth destined to take out nits and lice from the hair of a person. Therefore, ancient parents also knew the fight that came with a child’s hair.
Like lice, ancient people had instruments to respond to annoying pests. But often these tools demanded constant use. In the ancient Egyptian art, for example, Evans says that there are representations of how agricultural workers used networks to combat crop pests.
“Agricultural scenes show that quail were trapped in networks that were dragged through workers’ works,” says Evans. “Mero -Deader birds in fruit trees were also trapped, whether in small traps loaded with spring or through networks hung on the trees, tangled in the mesh after calling the workers made them rinse.”
Similarly, ancient traps were also used to capture rodents, and Evans said that a clay box found in Kahun may have been a rat trap. Elsewhere In the ancient worldClay boxes have been found dating 4,000 years in Bampur (a city in Iran), Mohenjo-Daro (an archaeological site in Pakistan) and Mundigak (an archaeological site in Afghanistan).
The clay boxes had ropes that closed a sliding door, indicating that the capture of mice was a practical activity. While the modern extermination tends to involve poisons or traps that a professional clarifies later, the ancients had to face pests one by one. In the ancient Egyptian art, for example, there are illustrations of “Flyks“Horsehair clusters and twigs are often used as swatters.
Constantly hitting insects or chasing rodents could be as annoying as the pests themselves. The ancient Egyptian art that involves cats represents them as mice hunters, and Evans says that the popularity of cats may have been partly due to their pest control skills.
Repel and free
Although much of the ancient approach to pest control involved networks, swatpers, traps and other tools, there is also evidence that the old ones tried to use natural alternatives. In Egypt, for example, grain pests increased together with agricultural production, and the old farmers had to protect their grain stores.
“The ashes of the plant were dispersed around the storage facilities and grinding stones, possibly to prevent beetle pests from polluting the grain, since dust can dehydrate insect bodies and affect their breathing,” says Evans.
Other natural remedies were designed for personal use. Such As a hall oil was used as treatment for the holders. A mixture of Fleaabano plant (a Margarita type plant), coal and other plants to remove flea from homes was used.
Like us, the ancients wanted to leave their homes, lice from their bodies and caps of their grain supplies. But Evans says there is also evidence that the ancient understood that pests were simply something they had to live.
“Its use of repellent and other practices tells us that the Egyptians definitely took measures to try to reduce the impact of pests, but when reviewing the evidence, what we also know is that, unlike us, they did not want or tried to annihilate them . “Evans says.
While today’s people go by poisons or chemical aerosols, Evans says that the ancients had greater tolerance. “… They accepted that the presence of these creatures was part of the world in which they lived, and thus, unlike us, their approach was more to keep them at a distance, instead of killing them,” she says.
Read more: From cultivation cultures to cooking food, old fire in the form of fire
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Emilie Lucchesi has written for some of the largest newspapers in the country, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. He has a degree in journalism at the University of Missouri and a mastery at the University of Depaul. She also has a pH.D. In communication of the University of Illinois-Chicago with emphasis on the framework of the media, the construction of messages and the communication of the stigma. Emilie has written three non -fiction books. His third, to Light in the Dark: survive more than Ted Bundy, is launched on October 3, 2023, from Chicago Review Press and is co -author of the survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.
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