Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – Since the catastrophic pandemics of the Middle Ages, one disease has almost proverbially symbolized contagion and death: the plague. It is now established that the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis has been present in Central and Northern Europe for more than 5,000 years. However, it remains uncertain whether it also led to pandemics and mass deaths in its early forms.
Megalithic grave Harhoog in Keitum, Sylt, Germany (c. 3000 BC). Credit: Michael Gäbler – CC BY 3.0
Researchers from Kiel, Münster, Schleswig, and Hamburg have recently analyzed bones from late Neolithic farmers within the framework of the Collaborative Research Center 1266 “Scales of Transformation” at Kiel University (CAU). For this study, the team conducted genetic analyses on bones from 133 human individuals found in late Neolithic megalithic graves near Warburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. These graves are associated with the Wartberg culture, which dates back approximately 5500 to 4800 years before the present.
The research team identified the genome of Yersinia pestis in bone samples from two individuals. The bacteria belonged to different strains. The infected individuals were unrelated, lived during different periods, and were interred in separate megalithic tombs. This suggests that these infections were independent incidents with no direct transmission between them.
“Our analyses indicate isolated infections rather than epidemics,” said Prof. Dr. Ben Krause-Kyora, a specialist in ancient DNA (aDNA) at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology at Kiel University and lead author of the study published in Communications Biology.
“Overall, we see a high diversity of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic period. This could indicate a low specialization of the bacterium at this early stage of its evolution. This may have facilitated its survival in different environments and animals,” says Ben Krause-Kyora.
The findings, along with the low incidence of plague cases among the 133 examined individuals, indicate that the megalithic structures do not serve as collective burial sites for victims of a widespread plague outbreak. The severity of symptoms caused by early forms of Yersinia pestis compared to those in the Middle Ages remains uncertain.
A pertinent question arises: how did Neolithic populations contract the infection initially? Unlike their medieval counterparts, Neolithic strains of Yersinia pestis were not transmitted via fleas. During the Neolithic period, deforestation significantly altered the landscapes of central and northern Europe. This environmental change attracted new rodent species from steppe regions to the east and south, which may have served as natural reservoirs for Yersinia pestis.
“However, we don’t know how often people came into contact with these animals or their carcasses,” says Krause-Kyora. Previously published genomic data from the bone sample of a Neolithic dog from Sweden indicated a possible infection pathway. When the Kiel team re-analyzed the data, they found that the dog was also infected with the plague bacterium at the time of its death.
“This is the first record of Yersinia pestis in a Neolithic dog. Since dogs are often found in human settlements at that time, they could have played a role in individual infections,” says Krause-Kyora.
“Overall, the results of our study suggest that the plague pathogen was already frequently present in or near human settlements, but that it led to isolated infections rather than large-scale disease outbreaks,” summarizes Krause-Kyora.
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“These results are also crucial for the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence, in which we are investigating how changes in climate, land use and diet may have influenced the spread of pathogens, especially Yersinia pestis.”
The study was published in the journal Communications Biology
Written by Conny Waters – AncientPages.com Staff Writer
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