A team of scientists from the Technical University of Denmark has discovered that contrary to what the historical record alludes to, the “plague” infected humans much earlier than we thought: 3,300 years earlier .
To reach this conclusion, the researchers sequenced the DNA ( 89,000 million DNA sequences ) of various dental samples of 101 individuals of the Bronze Age from both Europe and Asia from museums and archaeological excavations, finding traces of plague infections about 4,800 years ago .
Specifically, they discovered DNA of Yersinia Pestis in seven of the 101 individuals, whose teeth had been temporarily located at the beginning of the Iron Age between 2794 BC and 951 BC Thus, evolutionary analysis has allowed the origin of Yersinia pestis to be dated to 5,783 years.
Yersinia pestis is the bacterium that causes this disease and it took about 1,000 years for, after some genetic changes, it finally managed to overcome the immune system of its victims and spread with the ferocity with which it did to end, for example, with 60% of the population of Europe in the fourteenth century , according to the US Center for Disease Prevention and Control It is undoubtedly one of the pests that has caused the most death in our species.
The study has been published in the journal Cell.
