Paleoparasitological Studies on Mummies of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea

Abstract

Paleoparasitology is the application of conventional or molecular investigative techniques to archeological samples in order to reveal parasitic infection patterns among past populations. Although pioneering studies already have reported key paleoparasitological findings around the world, the same sorts of studies had not, until very recently, been conducted in sufficient numbers in Korea. Mummified remains of individuals dating to the Korean Joseon Dynasty actually have proved very meaningful to concerned researchers, owing particularly to their superb preservation status, which makes them ideal subjects for paleoparasitological studies. Over the past several years, our study series on Korean mummies has yielded very pertinent data on parasitic infection patterns prevailing among certain Joseon Dynasty populations. In this short review, we summarized the findings and achievements of our recent paleoparasitological examinations of Joseon mummies and discussed about the prospects for future research in this vein.

Estimation of parasite infection prevalence of Joseon people by paleoparasitological data updates from the ancient feces of pre-modern Korean mummies

“…Briefly, in our previous studies on the ancient feces, we have employed microscopic or molecular techniques to discover different kinds of ancient parasite eggs such as Ascaris, Trichuris, Clonorchis, Paragonimus, Metagonimus, Gymnophalloides, Strongyloides, Enterobius, Taenia, and Trichostrongylus (Seo et al, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2014aShin et al, 2009aShin et al, , b, 2011Shin et al, , 2012aShin et al, , b, 2013aShin et al, , b, 2014Shin et al, , 2015Oh et al, 2010aOh et al, , b, 2015Kim et al, 2014). From a series of studies on Korean mummy feces, we constructed the existing corpus on Joseon mummy parasitism (n = 18).…”

“…We revealed that the overall positive ratios for Ascaris and Trichuris in Joseon mummies were 50.0% and 77.8%, respectively. Although the infection prevalence of the ancient parasitism is only based upon crude estimations, these have been very helpful both in answering queries and raising new questions about historical Korean parasite-infection patterns (Seo et al, 2014a).…”

Tracing the historical origin of Joseon mummies considering the structural similarities between the burial systems of Korean and Chinese dynasties

“…2). By anatomical, histological, radiological and molecular investigations, signs of congenital or acquired diseases have been identifi ed [2,3,5,6,9,10,11,13]. Th e above-noted research techniques employed in collaborative research have driven the expansion of our understanding of Joseon societies to an unexpectedly high level.…”

Paleopathological, Trichological and Paleoparasitological Analysis of Human Skeletal Remains from the Migration Period Cemetery Prague-Zličín

“…The most reliable connection is the finding of a parasite in human or animal remains. There are records of parasites in mummies and other well preserved human remains (Cockburn et al 1975;David 1997;Oeggl 2009;Seo et al 2014;Shin et al 2011;Horne 2002;Sianto et al 2005;Wei 1973), but for skeletal graves there exist very few records (Dittmar, Teegen 2003;Jaeger et al 2013;Mitchell et al 2013).…”