By Amy Sood, CNN
Humanity has been ravaged by the plague, one of the deadliest bacterial infections in history, for thousands of years. Now scientists have discovered an ancient strain of the bacteria in the world’s oldest plague victim.
The disease would possibly have killed almost part of the European population in the Middle Ages, when it was known as the Black Death. It affects humans and other mammals and is transmitted to humans through fleas that live in rodents.
A joint German-Latvian team has detected the oldest known strain of the plague-causing bacterium, Yersinia pestis, in the remains of a hunter-gatherer who lived in present-day Latvia 5,000 years ago.
The presence of the strain showed the bacterium gave the impression thousands of years earlier than scientists had in the last idea: losing softness in the first roots of the pest, according to a study published Tuesday in the clinical journal Cell Reports.
The man, believed to be in his 20s and 30s, likely died after being bitten by a rodent carrying a strain of the bacteria, according to the study. His skull was excavated in the past 1800, but disappeared soon after. It was despite everything discovered in the collection of German anthropologist Rudolph Virchow in 2011.
Scientists then examined his remains, as well as those of 3 other specimens from the same site, all of which probably belonged to the same hunter-fisher-gatherer organization. their genomes and identify bacterial and viral pathogens.
Since the 4 sets of remains were so old, the DNA of the bones is only provided as small fragments, said the scientists, who then had to meticulously reassemble the genome of the bacterium before they could analyze it and compare it with other ancient and fashionable ones. strains of Y. Pestis.
They were stunned by the evidence of the bacteria responsible for the plague in samples belonging to people between 20 and 30 years old.
“The most surprising thing is that we can postpone the appearance of Y. pestis 2000 years longer than previous published studies suggested,” said lead writer Ben Krause-Kyora. “It turns out that we are close to the origin of the bacterium. “
The researchers were able to verify that this strain of the bacterium Y. pestis could possibly have been a component of a lineage that emerged about 7,000 years ago. They also discovered something that set this ancient strain of the plague apart from its later variants: It was not transmissible to humans via fleas, unlike its more fashionable counterparts.
This meant the strain would possibly have been less contagious, the researchers said, noting that the presence of the bacterium only in the remains of people in their 20s and 30s and not in those buried near it to rule out a death. network infestation.
These effects would possibly recommend that infections caused by Y. pestis occur in small remote instances and evolve into their medieval and fashionable bureaucracy in parallel with the expansion of human civilization and the progression of giant cities after this period.
These findings, that the early form of the plague is likely to be a slow-moving disease that is not as transmissible, shed new details on our known stories, that is, regarding the progression of human civilization in Europe and Asia, according to a cell press release. Reports.
For example, this contradicts assumptions that Y. pestis arose from megacities that evolved only after the life of hunter-gatherers, or that it would possibly have caused a significant population decline in Western Europe in the Neolithic past.
The-CNN-Wire ™
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