Home » Technology » :: OSEL.CZ :: – The oldest known plague tribe infected collector hunters 5,000 years ago

:: OSEL.CZ :: – The oldest known plague tribe infected collector hunters 5,000 years ago

Skull of a man RV 2039. Credit: Dominik Göldner, BGAEU, Berlin.

Memories of the Black Death did not fade. The plague still has a very bad reputation. In addition, he has not yet died out and occasionally appears in various parts of the world. Scientists are still intensely interested in it, and that’s fine. For similar diseases, it is important to know as much as possible and be prepared for possible problems.

Ben Krause-Kyora.  Credit: CAU How.

Ben Krause-Kyora. Credit: CAU How.

Molecular archaeologist Ben Krause-Kyora from the German Chistian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and his team more or less accidentally came across the oldest known strain of the plague, ie its causative agent, cursed bacteria Yersinia pestis. He infected a gatherer hunter who died 5,000 years ago. The researchers analyzed his genome and found that it was probably less contagious and also less deadly than the later plague, which killed half of Europe during the Black Death. The oldest discovered plague of the plague is about 2,000 years younger.

The plague then infected a man between the ages of 20 and 30, now known as RV 2039. He is one of two people whose remains were discovered in the nineteenth century in Rinnukalns, Latvia. The findings then disappeared from the radar of historians and were discovered only recently, in 2011, in the extensive collection of the German anthropologist Rudolph Virchow. Then two more burials were discovered at the original site of the find, probably from the same group of hunter-gatherers.

Krause-Kyora and colleagues obtained samples from the bones and teeth of all four people in the group. They read their genomes and searched for sequences of bacterial and viral pathogens. They extracted a plague sequence from the genome of a man labeled RV 2039, which certainly surprised them. They reconstructed the genome of this plague and compared it with other known genomes of this dreaded disease. Their analyzes showed that it is the oldest known strain of the plague. Apparently it was part of a line that appeared about 7,000 years ago, shortly after the species itself emerged. Yersinia pestis, by cleavage from the bacteria Yersinia pseudotuberculosis.

Plague agent.  Credit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH / Wikimedia Commons.

Plague agent. Credit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH / Wikimedia Commons.

Researchers were also surprised that this oldest known plague had a genome very similar to today’s plague. Only a few genes are missing. However, as Krause-Kyor points out, even small changes in the genome can have a dramatic effect on the virulence and other properties of the pathogen. The plague RV 2039 lacks, among other things, one essential gene that is necessary for the use of fleas to transmit the disease. This gene could also be responsible, at least in part, for the plague becoming an apocalyptic killer. It is better for flea transmission when the infected person dies. The gene acquired plague in its genome about a thousand years after the death of man RV 2039.

As for the unfortunate RV 2039, the cause of the plague was detected in his bloodstream. That means the plague must have killed him. However, at that time it was a slightly milder disease and it could take longer. At the same time, the man in question appears to have been the only plague infected in the group of gathered hunters found and was buried with dignity, not as a victim of a devastating epidemic. Researchers speculate that he was apparently infected by a rodent bite and that he did not infect others.

The conclusions of the research contradict a number of theories about the development of civilizations in Europe and Asia. Some historians believe that infectious diseases, such as the plague, developed in ancient megacities, home to thousands of people, where infections spread like wildfire. However, the archaic plague apparently appeared long before the emergence of large cities and was not very contagious at first.

Video: Ben Krause-Kyora, -Insights into the evolutionary history of Mycobacterium Leprae gained

Literature

Science Daily 29. 6. 2021.

Cell Reports 35: 109278.

– .

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.