Plague infected humans much earlier than previously thought
Thursday, October 22, 2015 - 15:20
in Biology & Nature
The photo shows a Bronze Age human skull from the Yamnaya culture painted with red ochre. Plague infections were common in humans 3,300 years earlier than the historical record suggests, reports a study published October 22 in Cell. By sequencing the DNA of tooth samples from Bronze Age individuals from Europe and Asia, the researchers discovered evidence of plague infections roughly 4,800 years ago. But it was at least another thousand years until the bacterium that causes the disease, Yersinia pestis, acquired key changes in virulence genes, allowing it to spread via fleas and evade the host immune system.