In prehistoric graves of children in Siberia, scientists have found the world’s oldest evidence of a plague outbreak.The discovery, described in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, rewrites the history of one of the most consequential diseases in human history.The graves, on the banks of the Angara River, contained remains from multiple generations of hunter-gatherers, along with archaeological remnants like arrowheads that date back about 5,500 years. When researchers did genetic testing on the skeletons’ teeth, they found DNA of the bacterium that causes plague in about 40%.A shared grave with three children, two of whom were identified as half-sisters 9 to 10 years old and 5 to 6 years old. The third occupant is a boy 11 to 12 years old who wasn’t closely related but was buried at the same time and found to have plague DNA. (Courtesy Vladimiri Bazaliiskii)(Courtesy Vladimiri Bazaliiskii)The study’s lead author, Ruairidh Macleod, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, said one grave contained a set of cousins or sisters 4 to 9 years old.AdvertisementAdvertisement“We see three very young girls, all buried at the same time, having presumably died at the same time. We detect lots of plague DNA in all three of these individuals,” he said, adding, “It’s clearly having a very tragic impact on the children in particular in these communities.”The study suggests there were two separate plague outbreaks in the hunter-gatherer communities. It’s the first evidence that an ancient version of plague most likely spread among family members and that it affected prehistoric groups not previously thought to have been devastated by the disease. Although a previous study described a plague infection in a single hunter-gatherer who died about 5,000 years ago in present-day Latvia, it did not find evidence of an outbreak or human-to-human transmission.Plague has changed the course of history several times, most notably in the pandemic that began in 1347, when it swept across Europe, wiping out half of the continent’s population. Outbreaks of the “Black Death,” as it became known, re-emerged routinely in Europe for centuries afterward, periodically disrupting societies.Scientists have long associated the initial emergence of plague and other infectious epidemic diseases with the Neolithic Revolution, sometimes called the first agricultural revolution. That’s when many human societies shifted away from nomadic lifestyles focused on hunting and foraging and shifted toward farming and keeping domesticated animals. In that new dynamic, higher densities of people lived close to animals that could carry harmful pathogens.AdvertisementAdvertisementBut outside researchers said the new study undermines that narrative.“It is clear evidence of an outbreak in prehistoric times,” said Nicolás Rascovan, who researches ancient DNA at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and was not involved in the study. He added that the study “argues against agricultural lifestyles as the major driver of plague emergence.”The new findings suggest that the plague most likely emerged periodically in certain hunter-gatherer communities that wer …
