Plague was killing entire families thousands of years before the Black Death
Ancient DNA reveals that plague was already killing hunter-gatherers in Siberia 5,500 years ago, long before cities and flea-driven epidemics. The prehistoric strains may have been especially dangerous because they carried a genetic factor capable of provoking severe immune reactions.
New research has revealed that the deadly plague, long associated with rats and urban cities, was already a deadly threat 5,500 years ago in small, mobile hunter-gatherer groups in East Siberia. An international team of scientists analyzed ancient DNA from human remains at four burial sites in the Lake Baikal region, identifying previously unknown early forms of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for plague.
Nearly 40 percent of the individuals tested carried DNA evidence of plague, a detection rate higher than at some medieval plague burial sites. The scientists found that these ancient plague strains were highly lethal, containing a distinctive superantigen not seen in historic plague strains. This finding suggests that early plague outbreaks were as deadly as later historical epidemics, particularly for children.
The researchers suspect that plague may have first emerged in Central or North-East Asia before spreading to Europe, where it became infamous during and after the Middle Ages.
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