Researchers studying ancient DNA have found evidence that plague was infecting and killing humans roughly 5,500 years ago, far earlier than previously documented and long before the dense cities and rat populations once thought necessary for its spread.
By analyzing genetic material recovered from the remains of hunter-gatherers, the team detected traces of the bacterium responsible for plague, pushing back the earliest known infections by millennia. The discovery challenges long-standing assumptions about how and when the disease emerged as a human threat.
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, infamous for the medieval Black Death that killed tens of millions across Europe and Asia. Historians have traditionally linked major outbreaks to crowded urban settlements and rodent hosts that carried infected fleas.
The new findings suggest the bacterium was circulating among small, mobile prehistoric populations well before agriculture, permanent settlements or large rat colonies existed. That implies early strains may have spread through different routes than later epidemics.
The research adds to a growing body of work using ancient DNA to trace the deep history of infectious disease, offering insight into how pathogens evolve alongside human societies over thousands of years.
Created by Ayen Stabel.
Stabel is AI and can make mistakes.
Sources:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/health_medicine/