Social distancing may have roots 6,000 years ago, as research shows Neolithic villages like Nebelivka used clustered layouts to control disease spread.
The phrase “social distancing” became widely recognized in recent years as people worldwide adapted their behavior to combat the COVID pandemic. However, new research led by UT Professor Alex Bentley suggests that the concept of maintaining organized physical distance may trace back roughly 6,000 years.
Bentley, from the Department of Anthropology, published a recent study in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface. His coauthors include Simon Carrignon, a former UT postdoctoral researcher who was a research associate at the Cambridge University’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research while working on this project.
“New ancient DNA studies have shown that diseases such as salmonella, tuberculosis, and plague emerged in Europe and Central Asia thousands of years ago during the Neolithic Era, which is the time of the first farming villages,” said Bentley. “This led us to ask a new question, which is whether Neolithic villagers practiced social distancing to help avoid the spread of these diseases.”
Urban Planning Over the Centuries
As computational social scientists, Bentley and Carrignon have published on both ancient adaptive behaviors and the spread of disease in the modern world. This project brought these interests together. They found that the “mega-settlements” of the ancient Trypillia culture in the Black Sea region, circa 4,000 BC, were a perfect place to test their theory that boundaries of personal space have long been integral parts of public health planning.
They focused on a settlement called Nebelivka, in what is now Ukraine, where thousands of wooden homes were regularly spaced in concentric patterns and clustered in neighborhoods.
“This clustered layout is known by epidemiologists to be a good configuration to contain disease outbreaks,” said Bentley. “This suggests and helps explain the curious layout of the world’s first urban areas—it would have protected residents from emerging diseases of the time. We set out to test how effective it would be through computer modeling.”
Carrignon and Bentley adapted models developed in a previous National Science Foundation-funded project at UT. Bentley was co-investigator with research lead Professor Nina Fefferman in this work modeling the effects of social distancing behaviors on the spread of Covid-like pandemics to study what effects these practices—such as reducing interaction between neighborhoods—might have had on prehistoric settlements.
“These new tools can help us understand what the archaeological record is telling us about prehistoric behaviors when new diseases evolved,” said Bentley. “The principles are the same—we assumed the earliest prehistoric diseases were foodborne at first, rather than airborne.”
Following the Trail
Their current study simulated the spread of foodborne disease, such as ancient salmonella, on the detailed plan of Nebelivka.
They teamed with:
- John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska, archaeologists from England’s Durham University, who excavated Nebelivka;
- Brian Buchanan, a researcher at Eastern Washington University researcher who did a detailed digital map of the site;
- and Mike O’Brien, a cultural evolution expert from Texas A&M in San Antonio.
They ran the archeological data through millions of simulations to test the effects of different possible disease parameters.
“The results revealed that the pie-shaped clustering of houses at Nebelivka, in distinct neighborhoods, would have reduced the spread of early foodborne diseases,” said Bentley. “Fighting disease might also explain why the residents of Nebelivka regularly burned their wooden houses to replace them with new ones. The study shows that neighborhood clustering would have helped survival in early farming villages as new foodborne diseases evolved.”
Applications for Today
With their success in modeling from sparse archaeological data, this approach could be applied to contemporary and future situations when disease data are sparse, even for airborne illnesses.
“In the early 2020 days of the Covid epidemic, for example, few US counties were reporting reliable infection statistics,” said Bentley. “By running millions of simulations with different parameter values, this approach—known as ‘Approximate Bayesian Computation’—can be applied to test different models versus contemporary disease data, such as infection numbers in US counties over time.”
The team’s mix of ancient solutions and modern applications exemplifies the innovative approaches that Volunteer researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences bring to making lives better for Tennesseans and beyond.
Reference: “Modelling cultural responses to disease spread in Neolithic Trypillia mega-settlements” by R. Alexander Bentley, Simon Carrignon, Bisserka Gaydarska, John Chapman, Brian Buchanan and Michael J. O’Brien, 30 September 2024, Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2024.0313
News
Your Washing Machine Might Be Helping Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Spread
A new study reveals that biofilms in washing machines may contain potential pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes, posing possible risks for laundering healthcare workers’ uniforms at home. Washing healthcare uniforms at home could be [...]
Scientists Discover Hidden Cause of Alzheimer’s Hiding in Plain Sight
Researchers found the PHGDH gene directly causes Alzheimer’s and discovered a drug-like molecule, NCT-503, that may help treat the disease early by targeting the gene’s hidden function. A recent study has revealed that a gene previously [...]
How Brain Cells Talk: Inside the Complex Language of the Human Mind
Introduction The human brain contains nearly 86 billion neurons, constantly exchanging messages like an immense social media network, but neurons do not work alone – glial cells, neurotransmitters, receptors, and other molecules form a vast [...]
Oxford study reveals how COVID-19 vaccines prevent severe illness
A landmark study by scientists at the University of Oxford, has unveiled crucial insights into the way that COVID-19 vaccines mitigate severe illness in those who have been vaccinated. Despite the global success of [...]
Annual blood test could detect cancer earlier and save lives
A single blood test, designed to pick up chemical signals indicative of the presence of many different types of cancer, could potentially thwart progression to advanced disease while the malignancy is still at an early [...]
How the FDA opens the door to risky chemicals in America’s food supply
Lining the shelves of American supermarkets are food products with chemicals linked to health concerns. To a great extent, the FDA allows food companies to determine for themselves whether their ingredients and additives are [...]
Superbug crisis could get worse, killing nearly 40 million people by 2050
The number of lives lost around the world due to infections that are resistant to the medications intended to treat them could increase nearly 70% by 2050, a new study projects, further showing the [...]
How Can Nanomaterials Be Programmed for Different Applications?
Nanomaterials are no longer just small—they are becoming smart. Across fields like medicine, electronics, energy, and materials science, researchers are now programming nanomaterials to behave in intentional, responsive ways. These advanced materials are designed [...]
Microplastics Are Invading Our Arteries, and It Could Be Increasing Your Risk of Stroke
Higher levels of micronanoplastics were found in carotid artery plaque, especially in people with stroke symptoms, suggesting a potential new risk factor. People with plaque buildup in the arteries of their neck have been [...]
Gene-editing therapy shows early success in fighting advanced gastrointestinal cancers
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have completed a first-in-human clinical trial testing a CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique to help the immune system fight advanced gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. The results, recently published in The Lancet Oncology, show encouraging [...]
Engineered extracellular vesicles facilitate delivery of advanced medicines
Graphic abstract of the development of VEDIC and VFIC systems for high efficiency intracellular protein delivery in vitro and in vivo. Credit: Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59377-y. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59377-y Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a technique [...]
Brain-computer interface allows paralyzed users to customize their sense of touch
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists are one step closer to developing a brain-computer interface, or BCI, that allows people with tetraplegia to restore their lost sense of touch. While exploring a digitally [...]
Scientists Flip a Gut Virus “Kill Switch” – Expose a Hidden Threat in Antibiotic Treatment
Scientists have long known that bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, live in our gut, but exactly what they do has remained elusive. Researchers developed a clever mouse model that can temporarily eliminate these phages [...]
Enhanced Antibacterial Polylactic Acid-Curcumin Nanofibers for Wound Dressing
Background Wound healing is a complex physiological process that can be compromised by infection and impaired tissue regeneration. Conventional dressings, typically made from natural fibers such as cotton or linen, offer limited functionality. Nanofiber [...]
Global Nanomaterial Regulation: A Country-by-Country Comparison
Nanomaterials are materials with at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometres (about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair). Because of their tiny size, they have unique properties that can be useful in [...]
Pandemic Potential: Scientists Discover 3 Hotspots of Deadly Emerging Disease in the US
Virginia Tech researchers discovered six new rodent carriers of hantavirus and identified U.S. hotspots, highlighting the virus’s adaptability and the impact of climate and ecology on its spread. Hantavirus recently drew public attention following reports [...]
