CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—An egg laid by the parasite Schistosoma has been found in the soils of a child’s grave at Tell Zeidan in Syria. This is the first confirmation that the infection existed in Mesopotamia, and is the oldest-known Schistosoma infection, occurring more than 6,000 years ago. Piers Mitchell of the University of Cambridge and his team collected sediments from the pelvic areas of 26 sets of skeletal remains that had been buried in a cemetery of the Ubaid people, who were farmers. “A lot of different parasites—pinworms, hookworms, tapeworms—cannot infect you if you are moving a lot of time,” Mitchell told Science. These parasites may have been living in freshwater snails, their temporary hosts, in the Ubaid’s innovative irrigation canals.
