Westernisation: A Misnomer 

Although the term is applied as dogma, “Westernisation” is neither the historical origin nor the behavioural cause of the diversity loss of our skin microbiome. 

Westernisation refers to the process by which western Europe exported its culture, values, practices, technologies, and institutions to other societies and countries by colonisation and global power politics, serving as a precursor to globalisation. Westernisation is in the wrong place at the wrong time. We need to go much further back to urbanisation. 

Urbanisation

Urbanisation is defied by its permanent sedentary living, over-development; over-crowding, waste issues, division of labour, products, and organising social hierarchy. 

Although sedentary settlement began 12,025 (±150) years ago at Jericho, urbanisation was apparent there 10,325 (±75) years ago when its first wall and conical tower are built from stone enclosing a settlement of mud-brick walled huts. No social hierarchy is detectable, no communal granary or larger buildings. This was achieved 3,000 years before pottery. 

Figure 01: Conical tower, Jericho: The first known urban monumental architecture. Remains of plaster over door (left). Staircase views (centre). Plan showing staircase shaft alignment with summer solstice, implying a symbolic or ceremonial role for the tower beyond practical needs. 

Credit: Kenyon, K. M., & Holland, T. A. (1981). “Excavations at Jericho: The Architecture and Stratigraphy of the Tell: Plates.” London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. 

Urbanisation can also be defined by a reduction in contact with nature, clearance of biomass and the advance of hygiene – the interrelated causes of skin microbiome diversity loss. This steady progression took some 5,000 years from the stone structures at Jericho.  

Archaeology records deforestation with significant biodiversity loss to the Bronze Age. Urban hierarchy developed. Hand washing pottery, bathrooms, new cleaning substances and socio-cultural norms of hygiene appear in the record  - new hygiene practices.

Structured Hygiene

A serious threat to urban existence was waste, biohazard and disease. Cleansing by moving settlement regularly was no longer an option. Disease could move quickly in crowded spaces, and a healthy force was required to keep land claimed from nomads and nature to continue a urban settlement. 

Urban hygiene began as, and continues to be, a critical settlement survival factor — but it also evolved into a far more ‘structured hygiene’.  

Dirt became noticeable, as shared community became hierarchical society. Activity that generated dirt, dealt with waste, biohazard or nature was identified as low status, shameful, scorned — even taboo. Bulwar-Lytton’s “the great unwashed” had been designated. 

Long before John Wesley sermonised the Talmud’s instruction that “cleanliness is next to godliness” hygiene and ritual purity had been intertwined into the social control and status of structured hygiene. It was also silently reshaping skin microbial communities.

Figure 02: Estimated skin microbiome diversity loss over 12,000 years of urbanisation.

By the time of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt 5,325 (±100) years ago dermatological complaints existed due to skin microbiome dysbiosis.

With every step forward - from Jericho’s survival hygiene to today - humans narrowed the microbial protection on their skin. The modern skin microbiome is a shadow of its former self. Once-perfect ecosystems have been simplified and stripped of their diversity.

Urbanisation disrupted more than biodiverse environments. Urbanisation not Westernisation rewrote the intimate connections between humans and our microbial cohabitants.