Rachel Singer

@rachelbsinger.bsky.social

Environmental historian of first-millennium Britain/Ireland and Merovingian Gaul. PhD Candidate at Georgetown researching infectious disease, rebel nuns, and disaster. Philly sports fan and weird rescue animal enthusiast by night. rachelbsinger.com

A new analysis in Science of DNA from Chilean mummies has revealed the earliest known strain of ancient smallpox from the Americas. The findings offer the clearest genetic evidence yet that European colonization brought this disease to the New World. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4w3Sl5U

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A question for my #medievalsky manuscript friends: has anyone ever come across a manuscript with white spots on it, as in the image below? Or any other MS that seemed diseased? I'm particularly interested in early medieval British and Irish instances, but I'd love to hear about anything you've got!

Medieval manuscript with a number of white spot blemishes on the right-hand side. Image source, Jiří Vnouček, "The Parchment of the Codex Amiatinus in the Context of Manuscript Production in Northumbria Around the End of the Seventh Century," Journal of Paper Conservation 20 (2019): fig. 13

Louse-borne relapsing fever is an important part of early British infectious disease history since William MacArthur’s 1949 speculation that it caused the mysterious, sixth-century outbreaks often assumed to be plague. It’s therefore Enormously exciting to have new paleoscientific evidence of it!

Pooja Swali@poojaswali.bsky.social · last yr.

Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬 Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️