Did a new form of plague destroy Europe's Stone Age societies?

Science mag ^ | December 6, 2018 | Lizzie Wade

[SunkenCiv]

Nearly 5000 years ago, a 20-year-old woman was buried in a tomb in Sweden... Now, researchers have discovered what killed her -- Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. The sample is one of the oldest ever found, and it belongs to a previously unknown branch of the Y. pestis evolutionary tree. This newly discovered strain of plague could have caused the collapse of large Stone Age settlements across Europe in what might be the world's first pandemic, researchers on the project say. But other scientists contend there isn't yet enough evidence to prove the case.

The newly discovered Neolithic bacterium belongs to a branch of the plague family tree separate from the later, better-known strains. It split off from a common ancestor about 5700 years ago, Rasmussen and Rascovan say. But it's not the common ancestor itself, meaning it doesn't reveal where or when plague originated, says Johannes Krause, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who has also studied ancient plague. "I'm not sure we have a good sense of how far back [plague] goes," agrees Anne Stone, an anthropological geneticist who studies ancient pathogens at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Rasmussen and Rascovan have an idea. During the Neolithic, the region in Eastern Europe that today includes Moldova, Romania, and parts of Ukraine was home to large "megasettlements" of tens of thousands of people belonging to what archaeologists call the Trypillia culture. Though their settlements weren't complex enough to qualify as cities, their residents still lived in close quarters with poor sanitation and stores of grain that would have attracted rodents, Y. pestis's wild host. "These megasettlements are the textbook example of a place where a pathogen could evolve," Rasmussen says.

[SunkenCiv]

Since the "small" modifier doesn't work in the "body of comment" for some reason, the chrono-sorted, duplicates-out list of the blackdeath, blackplague, and yersiniapestis keywords follows in #2. That's the plan, anyway.

[SunkenCiv]

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• Medieval Black Death Was Probably Not Bubonic Plague [2002]
• Black Death 'Was Not Plague' Say Experts [2002]

[SunkenCiv]

[Red Badger]

Lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas.....and plague...............

[OldNewYork]

So it’s the Swedes immigration policies again? Poor girl.

[blam]

Capstar

[Darteaus94025]

Liberals.

[colorado tanker]

Trypillia culture.

This would have followed the Black Sea flood?

[SunkenCiv]

Yup, by 2500 years.

[BenLurkin]

[SunkenCiv]

It's amusing to me that the occasional burning of these large neolithic settlements and rebuilding on the same footprint seems to mystify some -- the place was build out of flammable materials, and didn't use chimneys...

[Bonemaker]

Yersinia pestis then moslemia pestis now.

[Grimmy]

There might have even been the occasional purposeful burning to remedy “sick village syndrome”.

Move everyone out to temp housing during good weather, burn the settlement and kill off most of the pest infestations, rebuild and move back in before the weather turned harsh.

And the buildings in that period were fairly simple constructions so harvest wouldn’t much interfere with the process.

[Verginius Rufus]

Was the open space in the center the soccer field?

[BenLurkin]

Only when it wasn’t being used for Yoga and Drum Circle.

[Phlap]

How can it be “new” if it is 5,000 years old? Just askin.

[Deplorable American1776]

I thought the plague was caused by liberalism...

[OldNewYork]

When will we be rid of this plague?

[bgill]

Coming soon to the US via an illegal.

[gleeaikin]

I am curious as to why a Brexit oriented story is listed here with plague articles?