German, Israeli and Palestinian researchers are studying 6,000-year-old bones uncovered in the city of Jericho in an effort to help scientists combat tuberculosis.
"We see a re-emerging wave of tuberculosis all over the world and ... perhaps learning from the past will help us understand the present," Andreas Nerlich, professor of pathology at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University, said on Monday.
Nerlich and other researchers in the team have begun studying the ancient bones unearthed in Jericho more than a half-century ago by British anthropologist Kathleen Kenyon, in what is now the occupied West Bank.
Many of the bones show signs of tuberculosis, suggesting the disease afflicted a significant proportion of the population of the ancient world.
Experts believe the infectious bacterial disease, which usually attacks the lungs, could have originated about 10,000 years ago in the first villages and small towns in an area stretching from the Gulf through the Nile delta.
Researchers said preliminary work suggests there is sufficient DNA in the bone samples to provide clues to how tuberculosis evolves and help experts find new ways to fight it.
(Agencies via Xinhua July 16, 2008)