Oldest known plague outbreak occurred in Siberia 5,500 years ago, study finds
Researchers found plague DNA in 18 of 46 hunter-gatherers, showing the disease caused two outbreaks and likely spread through marmots and person-to-person contact.
- On Wednesday, researchers published findings in Nature revealing the oldest known plague outbreaks, dating back about 5,500 years among hunter-gatherers buried near Lake Baikal, Siberia.
- This discovery challenges long-standing theories that deadly epidemics required Neolithic farming or high-density settlements, showing plague emerged long before agricultural lifestyles became widespread.
- Genetic analysis of 42 hunter-gatherers revealed Yersinia pestis DNA in 18 remains, with researchers identifying marmots as the likely animal reservoir triggering infections that particularly impacted children.
- Evidence of acute mortality and mass burials indicates rapid transmission; University of Oxford geneticist Ruairidh Macleod called the findings a "devastating outbreak" affecting entire communities.
- These genomes capture plague near its evolutionary origin, pushing back the split between Y. pestis and Y. pseudotuberculosis by about 2,000 years and revealing previously unknown bacterial diversity.
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135 Articles
Earliest Plague Outbreak Identified in Siberia - Archaeology Magazine
Skull of a 10-year-old girl who may have died of the plague around 5,000 years ago in Siberia OXFORD, ENGLAND—The Guardian reports that evidence for an outbreak of plague some 5,500 years ago has been identified in DNA samples taken from the remains of hunter-gatherers buried in cemeteries in southeastern Siberia. A second outbreak likely occurred between 400 and 600 years later. Ruairidh Macleod of the University of Oxford and an international …
New Discovery That Hunter-Gatherer Children Died of Plague More Than Five Millennia Ago Sets Back the Date of the Earliest Outbreak
The skeletons of nomadic families unearthed in Siberia harbor "Yersinia pestis" bacteria, which challenges theories about conditions needed for the disease to spread
Scientists Just Discovered the Oldest Known Victims of the Plague
When we think of the plague (also known by its equally hardcore name, the Black Death), we think of it wiping out a huge chunk of Europe in the 14th century, seemingly out of nowhere. But according to new research published in Nature, we’re just realizing that the disease may have been around for way longer than that. And it may have been just as deadly back then, too. Scientists studying ancient cemeteries near Siberia’s Lake Baikal just found …
To speak of plague is synonymous with rats, fleas, muddy medieval cities and devastating epidemics in the middle ages. The Black Death, caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, was the most devastating pandemic in the history of humanity and ended half of the population of Europe in the 14th century.Continue reading...
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