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Richard James Havis

Bones aren’t a dry subject for academic Alice Roberts – they are the stuff of life itself.
The well-known presenter of science TV programmes is professor of public engagement in science at Birmingham University in the UK, and an expert in palaeopathology, the study of ancient diseases.
One of the best ways to learn about them is through examining ancient skeletal remains.
The former UK National Health Service doctor is also a researcher in osteoarchaeology, which involves investigating skeletons discovered on archaeological sites.
This is about the Middle Ages, so be prepared to be horrified.
Alice Roberts, author and anthropologist
New scientific techniques reveal a lot about their long dead owners, including diet, physical activities, and overall lifestyle.
“My ‘thing’ is the intersection of biology and history,” Roberts says at a lecture organised by New Scientist magazine, during which she discussed her new book, Crypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages, the third in a trilogy focusing on the UK.

“My background is as a medical doctor, and I became fascinated by the way that we can use medical science, and other scientific techniques, to unlock more and more information about the past, particularly from human remains,” she says.
Coupled with the relatively new discipline of palaeogenetics – studying DNA from ancient organisms – such techniques can provide a detailed description of how people in past times lived and died.
“Genetics is a new weapon in our arsenal,” Roberts says.
Her research and books show how skeletal remains can offer insights about history and heritage.
“Studying these ancient remains can give us a connection to those people who walked the landscape before us. A whole range of scientific techniques has allowed us to get closer and closer to their lives.”


Roberts’ latest book ranges far and wide over a clutch of murderous medieval diseases. It is a litany of doom and death – as she says herself.
“This is about the Middle Ages, so be prepared to be horrified.”
One fascinating chapter details how palaeogeneticists proved that the bubonic plague – the notorious Black Death that swept through Europe between 1347 and 1352, killing up to 28 million people – was not solely spread to humans by fleas that lived on rats, as historians had previously concluded.
Upending conventional wisdom, palaeogenetic researchers were able to show that the plague was also spread by human-to-human transmission via body lice, a discovery that has aided scientists studying how diseases are transmitted today.
Such “archaeological” work is often thought of as adding to what we have learned through historical studies, illustrating and expanding on our knowledge. But that is not the case at all, Roberts says.

Osteoarchaeology and palaeogenetics offer their own findings and conclusions, and these can challenge what is written in the history books. Even observant writers in ancient times had little or no scientific knowledge, so could not offer accurate analyses of the diseases they were seeing.
But the bones do not lie, Roberts says. “It’s not just illustrating history, it’s not just filling in the details, it’s actually forcing us to look at history again, and to overturn some of our long-held assumptions about it,” Roberts says.
Although she respects historians – history takes up a lot of space in her books – the scientific approach is much different to that of a historian, she notes.

It’s almost like being there, she says: “We’re not only using scientific techniques, we are applying a scientific method to look at the past. It feels very medical – it’s still diagnosis, whether you are diagnosing animal behaviour, or diagnosing ancient diseases.”
Palaeogenetic techniques are not only used to analyse the DNA of the human victims to see how they were affected by the disease. Researchers can also extract the DNA of the actual pathogen itself from the bones of those it killed.
“We can identify diseases by their DNA. That’s what happened when you took a PCR test for Covid-19,” she says. This enables researchers to compare the DNA of ancient diseases like leprosy with modern instances, to see if they have mutated.

“We learn something about the disease itself – you can see how a disease spread from animals to humans and then from humans to humans, then made its way across the globe,” she says.
“That’s really important for our understanding of that disease. We can do that better now than we have ever done before.”
Although Roberts spends much of her time studying pathogens, she has developed no affection for them. Quite the reverse, in fact – she would like to destroy them.
It makes you feel very lucky to be alive in the 21st century
Alice Roberts on advances in medical science
“These small things, pathogens, are out to get us. We should stop fighting among ourselves and try to get them. Some pathogens are truly awful,” she says.
Leprosy is a case in point. This disfiguring bacterial infection has plagued us for around four millennia, and still exists today. The World Health Organization aims to eradicate it by 2030, a goal that Roberts feels is within reach.
Osteoarchaeologists studying skeletons can easily identify the disease, as nothing else attacks the facial structures in the same way.
Also, bodies with amputated hands and feet suggest leprosy, as sufferers tended to badly injure their extremities because they had lost all feeling in them.

Today’s DNA testing is effective at fighting leprosy, as it can identify the disease in a victim before it starts to manifest any symptoms. It can then be treated with antibiotics.
In earlier times, there was no cure for leprosy and sufferers were isolated from the population. They were socially stigmatised, but were often looked after by monks in special hospitals, called leprosaria in England.
“The ability to detect and treat this disease before it starts to make you disfigured, before you start to lose sensation in your hands and feet, is something that our medieval forebears could not have imagined,” Roberts says.
“It makes you feel very lucky to be alive in the 21st century, with all its amazing science, and especially its medical science,” Roberts says.
Like what you read? Follow SCMP Lifestyle on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also sign up for our eNewsletter here.


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Professor Alice Roberts with Duncan Sayer, professor of archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire in northwest England, at an excavation of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery near Canterbury in Kent, southeast England. Photo: Facebook/ProfessorAliceRoberts

Mycobacterium leprae, one of two species of bacteria that cause leprosy, inside a human body. Illustration: Shutterstock

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Anthropologist Alice Roberts describes how secrets of diseases can be uncovered from old skeletons building workers and archaeologists find


Anthropologist Alice Roberts describes how secrets of diseases can be uncovered from old skeletons building workers and archaeologists find.


Medicine

History

Archaeology and palaeontology

Disease