Antibiotics in Ancient Bones

<editor's note>
From  "Pulse of the Planet," a featurette on public radio.
</editor's note>

Antibiotic medicines are fairly easy to come by these days, and one of 
the most common -- tetracycline -- can be used to treat anything from 
urinary tract infections to acne flareups. But would you believe that 
this bacteria-fighting drug might have been used more than 2,000 years 
ago? I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. George 
Armelagos is a professor of Anthropology at Emory University. He and his 
colleagues discovered traces of tetracycline in some well preserved 
bones found in Sudan, in Africa.

"When we started looking at the bone, we found that first of all ninety 
percent of the individuals had the tetracycline. So that means that it 
couldn't have been sort of a chance occurrence. This was something that 
they were probably ingesting throughout their lifetime consistently. So 
then what we did is we started thinking about what are the possibilities 
of how this could get into the system. Tetracycline is produced by 
streptomycedes, which is a mold-like bacteria. And it produces 
tetracycline as essentially a defense against other bacterias. So then, 
when we knew that somehow the streptomycedes would have to have 
contaminated the food."

Armelegos and his colleagues started out by investigating the 
consumption of grain within the ancient population. And then they 
realized that an interesting possibility was staring them right in the 
face...

"We looked at ways in which grain were used, and one of the things that 
we noticed is that grain was used to make beer. And then all of the 
sudden, it was just like an epiphany. We realized that this process of 
making beer might be the source of it."

Well, beer drinkers take note. By researching ancient recipes, 
scientists were able to make a beer that contained tetracycline.

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