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A Plague Mysteriously Spread From Europe Into Asia 4,000 Years Ago. Scientists Now Think They May Know How
WESTERN EURASIAN STEPPE, RUSSIA, AUG 11 – The study reveals domesticated sheep carried a prehistoric plague strain closely linked to human infections in Bronze Age Eurasian pastoralist societies, highlighting animal roles in disease spread.
- In Cell on August 11, 2025, researchers reported a 4,000-year-old domesticated sheep at Arkaim yielded the first prehistoric Y. pestis genome, linking livestock to ancient plague spillover.
- Originating around 5,000 years ago, the Late Neolithic Bronze Age lineage of Yersinia pestis infected humans for nearly 3,000 years before vanishing, genetically distinct from the Black Death.
- Researchers found that ancient sheep and humans carried nearly identical Y. pestis strains, both with the same LNBA lineage, indicating shared infection sources.
- However, researchers hypothesize that some questions about transmission and the unknown reservoir remain unanswered as the search in ancient animal remains is only just beginning.
- Future research may explore how animal domestication and Bronze Age herding increased contact with wild plague reservoirs, impacting zoonotic disease spread.
48 Articles
48 Articles
A plague mysteriously spread from Europe into Asia 4,000 years ago. Scientists now think they may know how
By Taylor Nicioli (CNN) — For thousands of years, a disease repeatedly struck ancient Eurasia, quickly spreading far and wide. The bite of infected fleas that lived on rats passed on the plague in its most infamous form — the Black Death of the 14th century — to humans, and remains its most common form of transmission today. During the Bronze Age, however, the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, had not yet developed the genetic tool kit that wou…
Prehistoric plague found in sheep and humans
Archaeological sheep bones unveiled at a Bronze Age site in the Eurasian steppe. Credit: © Björn Reichhardt A new study has uncovered ancient plague DNA in 4,000-year-old sheep bones, shedding light on how the pathogen was able to infect thousands of people across the world. The bacterium Yersinia pestis was an early form of plague that circulated during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age periods about 5,000 to 2,000 years ago. The pathogen is a …
Livestock played a role in prehistoric plague infections, genomic study finds
Around 5,000 years ago, a mysterious form of plague spread throughout Eurasia, only to disappear 2,000 years later. Known only from ancient DNA, this enigmatic "LNBA plague" lineage has left scientists puzzled about its likely zoonotic origin and transmission.
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