The terlits of Minos

h/t HBDChick: Minoan Yersinia. Also some salmonella aka paratyphoid aka (from a 2018 text) cocoliztli.

The archaeologi'context is EM3-MM1, in a cave now called St. ["Hagios"] Kharalambos. EM3 overlaps the 2200 BC climate event. Gunnar Neumann et al. note the burials were secondary - the remains moved from gravesite to gravesite. So - they reason - these bones may have been inhumed in 2200 BC and, at the outset of MM1, exhumed and rehumed.

These pathogens are from now-dead branches so unrelated to Justinian's Flea. It happens these branches couldn't even infect fleas. But they could infect food-supplies and, to put it delicately, the plumbing.

During the much later LM, Knossos has become famed for its running water, well in advance of Late-Helladic Greece and, really, of the Near East generally. I wonder if they inherited from the Middle people a mindset of hygiene.