Bacteria that caused Black Death, killed half of Europe in 14th C traced to 5,000-yr-old man
Weaker strain of bacteria Yersinia pestis, that caused the bubonic plague, existed over 2,000 years before the event, in a hunter-gatherer German scientists have named RV 2039 .
Mohana Basu 1 July, 2021 7:30 am IST Text Size:
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New Delhi: In the 14th century, the Black Death, a deadly pandemic of the bubonic plague, wiped out as many as half of Europe’s population. However, scientists have recently discovered that a weaker and less deadly strain of the plague infected humans a couple thousand years before the pandemic hit medieval Europe.
This 5,000-Year-Old Hunter-Gatherer Had The Earliest Known Plague Strain: Study
KEY POINTS
The early strain was likely less transmissible and less aggressive
It challenges suggestions that the bacteria evolved mostly in megacities
The Black Death wiped out nearly half of Europe s population in the 1300s. But how far back did the bacteria affect humans? A team of researchers may have possibly found the oldest strain of it in a 5,000-year-old specimen.
The plague bacteria was discovered in the skull of a 20- to 30-year-old hunter-gatherer (RV 2039) from 5,000 years ago, Cell Press said in a news release. This particular specimen was excavated along with another person s remains at a region called Rinnukalns in present-day Latvia in the 1800s. However, it got lost until it was recovered in a German anthropologist s collection in 2011.