Diet, pollution and modern living conditions have been implicated as the factors responsible for cancer, concluded researchers, after analyzing the remains of almost 1,000 individuals from ancient Egypt and Greece.

The investigation, conducted by a team from Manchester University, looked into medical literature of the time for descriptions of cancer symptoms as well as examining today’s remains for signs of the disease. They did, for the first time, manage to identify cancer in one Egyptian mummy but this remained the only example in their widespread search. With this in mind, the scientists concluded that cancer was even rarer than previously thought.