What Bit the Ancient Egyptians? Niche Modelling to Identify the Snakes Described in the Brooklyn Medical Papyrus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6422795 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elysha Mcbride (0000-0002-2559-5034, Bangor University, corresponding author), I C Winder (0000-0003-3874-303X, Bangor University), Wolfgang Wüster (0000-0002-4890-4311, Bangor University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 354-367 |
| Publication date | 2023-10-07 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Archaeology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1461-4103 • E-ISSN: 1749-6314 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14614103.2023.2266631 |
| OpenAlex | W4387423126 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
The Brooklyn Papyrus is a medical treatise from Ancient Egypt (∼660–330 BCE) focusing on snakebite. Herpetologists have proposed identifications for many of the animals it describes, but some remain uncertain partly because the species no longer live in Egypt. This paper uses niche modelling to predict the palaeodistributions of ten of these snake species, to test some proposed identifications. Occurrence records and environmental variables were used to generate maximum entropy models for each species in the present day and the mid-Holocene (∼4,000 BCE). Our models performed very well, generating AUC scores ≥0.867 and successfully predicting species’ current ranges. Nine species’ predicted palaeodistributions included areas within Ancient Egypt, and four (Bitis arietans, Dolichophis jugularis, Macrovipera lebetina and Daboia mauritanica) were within modern Egypt. Daboia palaestinae was also predicted to occupy a patch of suitable habitat inside modern Egypt, but separate from the species’ core range. The tenth species, Causus rhombeatus, would have been present in kingdoms that were the Ancient Egyptians’ regular trading partners. We therefore conclude that all ten species modelled in this study could have bitten Ancient Egyptian people. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of niche modelling in informing debates about the species ancient cultures may have interacted with
Ancient DNA · Ancient egypt · Ancient history · Archaeology · Biology · Ecological niche · Geography · Habitat · Papyrus · Range (aeronautics · Zoology · Demography · Engineering · History · Species Distribution and Climate Change · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research · Ecology
A statistical explanation of MaxEnt for ecologists
Original Article
Species Distribution Models
Modeling of species distributions with Maxent
Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World
A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence/absence models
Sample selection bias and presence‐only distribution models
WorldClim 2
Early hydraulic civilization in Egypt
Ancient Egypt as represented in the Museum of Fine Arts
Mid-to Late Holocene paleoclimatic changes and paleoenvironmental shifts inferred from pollen and diatom assemblages at Lake Hamra, Wadi El Natrun (Western Nile Delta, North Western Desert, Egypt)
Symptomatologie des morsures d'ophidiens d'après le papyrus Brooklyn n os 47.218.48 et 85
Categorizing reptiles in Ancient Egypt
| Highly cited | No |
|---|