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University of CambridgeIMAGE: Yamnaya people moved into Central Asia from the region around present day Caucasus in early Bronze Age (c. 5000 years ago) and developed the Afanasievo culture. The Afanasievo are one... view moreCredit: Natalia ShishlinaNew research using ancient DNA has revealed that plague has been endemic in human populations for more than twice as long as previously thought, and that the ancestral plague would have been predominantly spread by human-to-human contact -- until genetic mutations allowed Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis), the bacteria that causes plague, to survive in the gut of fleas.These mutations, which may have occurred near the turn of the 1st millennium BC, gave rise to the bubonic form of plague that spreads at terrifying speed through flea -- and consequently rat -- carriers. The bubonic plague caused the pandemics that decimated global populations, including the Black Death, which wiped out half the population of Europe in the 14th century.Before its flea-borne evolution, however, researchers say that plague was in fact endemic in the human populations of Eurasia at least 3,000 years before the first plague pandemic in historical records (the Plague of Justinian in 541 AD). ...https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/uoc-pih102115.php
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Topic: Plague in humans 'twice as old' but didn't begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals (Read 942 times)
