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From CBS News:

Ancient, unknown strain of plague found inwards 5,000-year-old tomb inwards Sweden

In a nearly 5,000-year-old tomb inwards Sweden, researchers guide maintain discovered the oldest-known strain of the notorious bacterium Yersinia pestis — the microbe responsible for humanity's possibly most-feared contagion: the plague.

The finding suggests that the germ may guide maintain devastated settlements across Europe at the halt of the Stone Age inwards what may guide maintain been the first major pandemic of human history. It could likewise rewrite some of what nosotros know of ancient European history.

The finding came most every bit the researchers were analyzing publicly available databases of ancient deoxyribonucleic acid for cases inwards which infections powerfulness guide maintain claimed prehistoric victims. They focused on the previously excavated site of Frälsegården inwards Sweden. Previous analysis of a limestone tomb at the site found that an estimated 78 people were buried there, together with they all had died inside a 200-year period. The fact that many people died inwards a relatively brusk fourth dimension inwards i house suggested they powerfulness guide maintain perished together inwards an epidemic, Pb report writer Nicolás Rascovan, a biologist at Aix-Marseille University inwards Marseille, France, told Live Science. The limestone tomb was dated to the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the menstruum when farming began.

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The researchers discovered the previously unknown strain of plague in the remains of a adult woman at the Frälsegården site. Carbon dating suggested she died most 4,900 years agone during a menstruum known every bit the Neolithic Decline, when Neolithic cultures throughout Europe mysteriously dwindled.

[Photos: Stone Age Skulls Found on Wooden Stakes]

Based on her hip bones together with other skeletal features, they estimated the adult woman was most twenty years former when she died. The plague strain found amongst her had a genetic mutation that tin dismiss trigger pneumonic plague — the deadliest shape of historic together with modern plague — suggesting the adult woman probable died of the disease. (The most mutual shape of plague is bubonic plague, which occurs when plague bacteria spread to the lymph nodes together with crusade inflammation, according to the World Health Organization. The inflamed lymph nodes are called "buboes." If the bacteria spread to the lungs, they tin dismiss trigger the deadlier pneumonic plague.)

By comparison the newfound strain amongst known plague DNA, the scientists determined that the ancient sample was the closest known relative of the plague bacterium's most recent ancestor. The report researchers theorized that the ancient sample diverged from other plague strains most 5,700 years ago.

How plague spread
The novel findings contradict an older theory most how plague spread, according to the researchers. About 5,000 years ago, humans migrated from the Eurasian steppe down into Europe inwards major waves, replacing the Neolithic farmers who lived inwards Europe at that time. Previous inquiry had suggested the steppe folk brought the plague amongst them, wiping out pre-existing settlements upon their arrival. However, if the plague specimen from the Swedish grave diverged from other strains 5,700 years ago, it probable evolved earlier the steppe migrations began — suggesting it was already there.

Rather, the researchers suggested that the plague emerged inwards so-called mega settlements of 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants that existed inwards Europe betwixt 6,100 together with 5,400 years ago. These mega settlements — upwards to x times larger than previous European settlements — "had people, animals, together with stored nutrient closed together, and, likely, real misfortunate sanitation. That's the textbook instance of what you lot postulate to evolve novel pathogens," senior report writer Simon Rasmussen, a computational biologist at the University of Copenhagen, said inwards a statement.

If plague evolved inwards these mega settlements, "then when people started dying from it, the settlements would guide maintain been abandoned together with destroyed. This is just what was observed inwards these settlements later 5,500 years ago," Rasmussen said. Plague hence could guide maintain spread across merchandise networks made possible by wheeled transport, which had expanded chop-chop throughout Europe yesteryear that time, Rascovan said. Eventually, it would guide maintain made its agency fifty-fifty to relatively distant sites similar Frälsegården inwards Sweden, where the adult woman the researchers analyzed died. That woman's deoxyribonucleic acid revealed she was non genetically related to steppe folk, supporting the reckon that this ancient strain of plague arrived earlier the migrants came from the steppe.

The perils of innovation?
Study co-author Karl-Göran Sjögren, an archeologist at the University of Gothenburg inwards Sweden, told Live Science that the uncovering of plague "in a relatively marginal expanse of the Neolithic basis … suggests well-established together with far-reaching contact networks" at that fourth dimension that allowed the illness to spread....

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