Researchers combined ancient climate data with modeling of modern habitats to identify fanged offenders
In this 3000-year-old illustration, the “solar cat” slays the serpent of darkness in the Papyrus of Ani, also known as the Book of the Dead, demonstrating the key role snakes played in ancient Egypt.If a snakebitten patient stumbled into an Egyptian physician’s office some 2500 years ago, the doctor might have reached for a papyrus scroll describing 34 snakes and their bites in hieratic script used by ancient Egyptians, with advice on how to treat them.
“It’s sort of mind-blowing” that ecological modeling could help answer questions about the health of ancient people, says Gerardo Martin, a disease ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mérida, who was not involved in the work. “It’s a very creative use of ecological knowledge.” To learn more, anthropologist Isabelle Winder and venom ecologist Wolfgang Wüster, both at Bangor University, asked their graduate student, Elysha McBride, to try an approach traditionally used to predict a species’ probable habitat range. The technique, called niche modeling, considers the environmental conditions where a species now lives, then incorporates climate data from elsewhere to figure out other suitable homes.
That habitat would have been suitable for nine of the 10 species studied, including the black mamba, puff adder , and the Palestine viper, the Bangor team reported on 7 October. The model suggested the 10th species, the rhombic night adder , lived just outside Egypt’s ancient borders, but may still have been known to the priests of Serket, McBride says.
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