How far back in recorded history can zoonotic diseases be traced?
They could be traced a long way back. Perhaps the first major group of zoonotic diseases probably occurred 8 to 10 thousand years ago and that was during the time of the advent of agriculture where communities were built because populations were stabilized and diseases were more easily spread. It was also at that time that animals were domesticated and for the first time in history that animals and people were brought together in close quarters and that was the first group of zoonoses, or zoonotic diseases. We also see references from ancient civilizations and their recordings from Babylon to the Nile Valley, China, even in the old testament. And writings of Hypocrites and Virgil, who wrote centuries ago, actually had references to this group of diseases. What about in medieval times? In medieval times, there are a lot of references and that was of course mainly because of the disease “plague,” which was a very significant event in history in terms of perhaps 25 percent of the world’s
