Oldest Plague Traces Found in Siberian Graves Surprise Scientists

Ancient Siberian graves have yielded the oldest DNA traces of the plague, a discovery that scientists say completely surprises them and challenges established beliefs about the disease's origins. The findings, published in the journal Nature, stem from examinations of hunter-gatherer skeletons from around 5,500 years ago in the Lake Baikal region.

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The findings fundamentally change how we think about the origins and early impact of one of humanity’s most consequential pathogens.

The plague has caused devastating pandemics throughout history, including the "Black Death" in the mid-1300s, which killed over 25 million people in Europe. This new evidence suggests the infectious disease posed a lethal threat to humanity far earlier than previously understood, contrary to the idea that it began as a mild illness.

"The findings fundamentally change how we think about the origins and early impact of one of humanity’s most consequential pathogens," said evolutionary geneticist Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge, a senior author of the study. He noted that the data "doesn't fit the model," but must be accepted.

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It doesn’t fit the model, But we have to accept the data.

The researchers observed that the outbreak was particularly deadly for young individuals, based on the burial sites containing children. They attribute this to genetic traits in these ancient strains that are no longer present in modern versions of the pathogen. The bacterium *Yersinia pestis* was detected in 18 out of 46 examined bodies near Lake Baikal, a higher rate than in some medieval plague burial sites. Ruairidh Macleod, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Oxford and lead author, called the discovery of a large-scale, lethal plague outbreak among these prehistoric hunter-gatherers a "complete surprise."

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complete surprise