Reuters Science News Summary | Science-Environment
Researchers found plague DNA in 18 of 46 hunter-gatherer skeletons, suggesting the disease was deadly long before fleas helped it spread widely.
- Geneticist Eske Willerslev led researchers who discovered the oldest-known plague DNA in 5,500-year-old skeletons from the Lake Baikal region in Siberia, marking a new record for ancient Yersinia pestis.
- Unlike later outbreaks linked to high population density, these ancient victims were nomads who moved in small groups across the Siberian landscape, catching fish and hunting game.
- Tests revealed plague DNA in 39% of the hunter-gatherers studied, matching detection rates from remains of the Black Death, suggesting the disease was a lethal threat in early human history.
- These early strains lacked genetic adaptations necessary to survive in fleas, and evidence suggests more than 1,000 years passed before the bacteria evolved into the epidemic-causing threat that would devastate Europe.
- Alexander Herbig, a computational biologist at the Max Planck Institute, noted the plague was not limited to Siberia, as similar DNA exists in a 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer found 3,000 miles away in Latvia.
12 Articles
12 Articles
Plague traced to ancient Siberian graves
About 5,500 years ago, bands of hunter-gatherers inhabited the Lake Baikal region in Siberia, sustained by rich resources including prey such as elk, deer, moose, fish, seals and rodents called marmots. These people became victims of the earliest known plague…
A new study has found that hunter-gatherers in Siberia fell victim to deadly outbreaks of plague around 5,500 years ago, the earliest known evidence of plague to date.
Ancient plague strain discovered in Russia rewrites disease history
A newly published study has uncovered the oldest known evidence of a deadly plague outbreak, revealing that humans were battling fatal infections nearly 5,500 years ago, long before the rise of cities and civilizations. The research, published in Nature, analyzed ancient DNA from prehistoric hunter-gatherers buried near Siberia’s Lake Baikal in Russia. Scientists identified a previously unknown strain of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that cause…
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