Nearly 2,000 Years Before the West, Nubians Used Antibiotics
Human use of antibiotics began not 80 years ago, but nearly 2,000 years ago along the banks of the Nile River in Nubia. They got tetracycline out of fermented grain that they used to brew beer, which everyone drank, starting as early as age 2. Scientists found large doses of tetracycline embedded in the bones of ancient African mummies. While the modern age of antibiotics began in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin, the new findings suggest that people knew how to fight infections much earlier than that.
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