World’s first-known plague victim was a hunter-gatherer who died 5,000 years ago in Latvia, scientists say
- The hunter-gatherer was one of two skeletons excavated in the late 19th century from a region called Rinnukalns in present-day Latvia
- Researchers in Germany said the remains carried the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes the disease known as the Black Death
The plague has ravaged humanity for thousands of years, wiping out as much as half of Europe’s population in the Black Death, and scientists have long puzzled over its origins and evolutionary history.
Researchers said on Tuesday they had found its first known victim: a hunter-gatherer who lived 5,000 years ago in what is now Latvia, whose remains carried the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes the disease.
“The analyses of the strain we identified shows that Y. pestis evolved earlier than thought,” Ben Krause-Kyora, head of the aDNA Laboratory at the University of Kiel in Germany, said.
Krause-Kyora and colleagues wrote in a paper in the journal Cell Reports the bacterial lineage emerged as far back as 7,000 years ago when it split from its predecessor, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis.
The new date pushes the previously held timeline back by 2,000 years.
The bacteria was missing key genes, such as one that enabled it to be spread via fleas – meaning the ancient strain was both less contagious and deadly than the medieval version.