Researchers trace plague back 3,000 years earlier than thought
23 Oct 2015
Plague has been a scourge on humanity for far longer than thought earlier, ancient DNA has shown.
Researchers recovered samples from the teeth of seven bodies, which showed that the bacterial infection was around in the Bronze Age.
They further showed, the infection at the time, had not been able to cause the bubonic form of plague or spread through fleas - abilities it evolved later.
According to the researchers, from the University of Copenhagen, plague might have shaped early human populations.
Three plague pandemics have been recorded in human history.
The Plague of Justinian started in AD541 and killed over 25 million people.
The Black Death started in China in 1334 and claimed the lives of up to half of Europeans
The Modern Plague, in China, emerged in the 1860s and caused 10 million deaths.
There had been suggestions of earlier plagues, including the Plague of Athens in 430BC.
However, scientists have rolled back the history of the infection in time, after studying 101 ancient skeletons.
Evidence of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the infection was found in the teeth of seven of them, from across western Europe and central Asia bacterium that causes plague.
The oldest dated back 5,783 years.
According to Simon Rasmussen of the Technical University of Denmark, before the study, the earliest evidence of the plague was from AD 540, said.
''We were very surprised to find it 3,000 years before it was supposed to exist,'' said Rasmussen, one of the study authors. The research was published online yesterday in the journal, Cell.
According to Rasmussen, knowing that plague existed thousands of years earlier than had been believed might explain some unsolved historical mysteries, including the ''Plague of Athens,'' a horrifying unknown epidemic that struck the Greek capital in 430 BC and killed 100,000 people during the Peloponnesian War.
''People have been speculating about what this was, like was this measles or typhus, but it could well have been plague,'' Rasmussen said.
He added tracking how the plague evolved from being an intestinal infection to ''one of the most deadly diseases ever encountered by humans'' could help scientists predict the disease's future path.
In August, a Los Angeles child was diagnosed with the plague after camping in Yosemite National Park in California in July. (See: California child diagnosed with plague after camping in Yosemite National Park).
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