According to this report clever folk are challenging longstanding assumptions that heart disease is mainly a malady of modern societies found evidence of hardening of the arteries in Egyptian mummies dating as far back as 3,500 years.

Where did it come from? Researchers don’t know for sure. Mummies by the very nature that they have been privilidgd to be mummified will be members of upper-class Egyptian society, and their diets included meat from cattle, ducks and geese. In addition, because there wasn’t refrigeration, salt was commonly used to preserve meat and fish, raising the possibility that some of these Egyptians had high blood pressure. Whether anyone was obese couldn’t be determined by the CT scans, but tobacco wasn’t part of the pharaohs’ lifestyle.

Heart disease is the world’s leading killer, and it is increasingly common in developing countries such as China, India and in Latin America. The growing prevalence of the disease is often attributed to urbanization, fast-food diets, smoking and sedentary lifestyles characteristic of Western societies.