Key Highlights
- For years, scientists were unsure how the ancient disease managed to spread so widely during the Bronze Age, which lasted from roughly 3300 to 1200 B. C., and stick around for nearly 2,000 years, especially since it wasn’t spread by fleas like later plagues.
- Now, researchers say a surprising clue may help explain it: a domesticated sheep that lived more than 4,000 years ago. Researchers found DNA from the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis in the tooth of a Bronze Age sheep discovered in what is now southern Russia, according to a study recently published in the journal Cell.
- It is the first known evidence that the ancient plague infected animals, not just people, and offers a missing clue about how the disease spread.
- SCIENTISTS CRACK THE CODE ON NEW VACCINE FOR DEADLY PLAGUE BACTERIA "It was alarm bells for my team," said study co-author Taylor Hermes, a University of Arkansas archaeologist who studies ancient livestock and disease spread, in a statement.
- "This was the first time we had recovered the genome from Yersinia pestis in a non-human sample." A domesticated sheep, likely similar to this one, lived alongside humans during the Bronze Age.
