A recent study analyzed DNA from the teeth of Bronze Age people from Europe and Asia. It found evidence of plague infection, from the Yersinia pestis bacterium, dating to 6,000 years ago! What later became the Black Plague was formerly spread only through contaminated food or human-to-human contact. It was later that a genetic mutation in the bacterium allowed them to survive in the guts of fleas – researchers estimate around the turn of the 1st century BCE.
The black death’s early co-existence with humans, and its ability to pass person-to-person, also suggests and interesting new avenue for forensic diagnosing. It may have been responsible for early epidemics, such as the plague of Athens. But proving which ancient plagues were really the Black Death in an earlier form is a subject for another study.
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