Scientists Find 5,500-Year-Old Plague DNA in Siberian Skeletons, Challenging Mild-Origin Theory
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jun 17
Scientists Find 5,500-Year-Old Plague DNA in Siberian Skeletons, Challenging Mild-Origin Theory
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 17
Summary
DNA from Yersinia pestis was isolated from 5,500-year-old hunter-gatherer skeletons in Siberia, giving scientists the oldest known evidence of plague in humans.
The finding suggests plague was already lethal thousands of years before the Black Death, overturning a long-held view that early strains were relatively mild and became deadlier later.
Researchers said the result does not fit existing models that tied major plague danger to the later rise of farming, grain storage and dense cities that brought rats, fleas and humans together.
Yersinia pestis still infects a few hundred people worldwide each year, but the new evidence pushes the disease's deadly history back nearly 5,000 years before medieval Europe’s best-known pandemic.