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New Discovery That Hunter-Gatherer Children Died of Plague More Than Five Millennia Ago Sets Back the Date of the Earliest Outbreak
Key takeaways
- The researchers say the early strains of plague they identified were highly lethal.
- The scientists found that at least 18 of the dead had been infected with Yersinia pestis.
- Lead study author Ruairidh Macleod, a genomicist at the University of Oxford, says the team didn’t expect these results.
The researchers say the early strains of plague they identified were highly lethal. Vladimiri Bazaliiskii Victims of the world’s oldest known plague outbreak have been identified in Siberia. They were children of hunter-gatherers, and about 5,500 years ago, they were infected with the plague-causing bacteria Yersinia pestis while eating or skinning raw marmots.
That’s according to a study recently published in the journal Nature, for which researchers tested the DNA of 46 skeletons unearthed at four prehistoric cemeteries along the Angara River in eastern Russia, north of Mongolia. The scientists found that at least 18 of the dead had been infected with Yersinia pestis.
Lead study author Ruairidh Macleod, a genomicist at the University of Oxford, says the team didn’t expect these results. Previously, researchers assumed plagued outbreaks only happened in high-density settlements.