The
plague is one of the deadliest diseases in human history, and scientists have now found the oldest known victim — which makes it much older than most experts thought until now, according to a new study.
Yersinia pestis is the bacteria widely believed to have been behind the plague that ravaged the world in the Middle Ages and may have wiped out half of the entire population of Europe in what became known as the Black Death. The disease was spread by fleas on rats, and began to spread further into Europe from Asia due to trade routes.
But while the disease first became known in the Middle Ages, and scientists believed it may have originated around 2,000 years ago, recent findings suggest the disease may be far older than previously thought.
Cell Reports, a 5,000-year-old Yersinia pestis genome was reconstructed by scientists from the bones of a 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer (dubbed RV 2039) found buried in Latvia.
This, the researchers believe, was likely one of, if not the earliest known strain of what would become known as the plague.
The hunter-gatherer was likely bitten by a rodent and died of shock following infection, the researchers theorize.
Cell found an ancient case of the plague in a 4,900-year-old tomb in Sweden.
cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: ’36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b’ }).render(‘4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6’); });
if(window.location.pathname.indexOf(“656089”) != -1){console.log(“hedva connatix”);document.getElementsByClassName(“divConnatix”)[0].style.display =”none”;}
2015 study in the same journal, scientists presented evidence that Yersinia pestis infected humans in Bronze Age Eurasia.
Cell found that two individuals in Russia 3,800 years ago were infected by the more virulent version, as was an individual from Iron Age Armenia 2,900 years ago.
In the 2018 study, the researchers theorized that an early plague pandemic contributed to the decline of Neolithic populations in Europe.
Most notably, the strain is different in that it marks the beginning of the evolution of Yersinia pestis, and is on a separate branch from the one found in Sweden. It further adds to other early genomes of the bacteria found in eastern Europe.
Furthermore, the researchers have reason to suspect that though the genome was found on 5,000-year-old bones, this strain of Yersinia pestis may have evolved around 7,000 years ago. This would put it not at the end of the Neolithic period as earlier theories suggested, but at the beginning.
animals. Most human cases have been seen in Africa.
However, humans can still catch the disease, either by being bitten by a flea carrying Yersinia pestis or by handing an animal infected with the disease.