Riaan F. Rifkin

'PATHOCENE' integrates the concepts of 'disease pathogens' and the Pleistocene archaeological epoch. The project aims to discover ancient pathogen DNA (apDNA) from Southern African archaeological caves and rock-shelters spanning the past 100,000 years. While ancient foraging groups did not sustain infectious agents like measles and influenza, it is nevertheless from this pre-65,000 year sub-Saharan African ‘Pleistocene disease baseline’ that most modern human diseases derive. The potential impact of disease on humans is illustrated by the fact that 60% of modern hunter-gatherers succumb to disease before reaching 15 years of age!

Why investigate ancient diseases? What is the value of ancient pathogens for modern disease prevention strategies? And how can novel data about prehistoric diseases provide benefits to living populations? These are important questions as the societal relevance of academic research is an increasingly contentious topic. Human health and longevity, and the impact of diseases on our wellbeing, arguably represents one of the most important current societal issues, especially in Africa. I believe that information concerning ancient pathogens can provide many benefits to contemporary society. Such information can be used to anchor pathogen mutation rates and reconstruct evolutionary processes, be valuable in vaccine development and play a role in the discovery of pathogens that might pose significant future disease threats to humanity!

Initiating exploratory projects such as this is much easier said than done. Mainly, and while ancient DNA (aDNA) research is a niche which is rapidly expanding internationally, it remains undeveloped in Africa. This is particularly unfortunate, as African human and pathogenic aDNA is crucial to most analyses reconstructing the evolutionary history of anatomically modern humans. This is also the primary objective of y research - to pioneer, promote and establish the apDNA research niche in Africa!

November 2016