Thousands of years before the Black Death killed one-third of Europe’s population in the 14th century, a mysterious and prehistoric form of the plague spread throughout Eurasia. This prehistoric pathogen that is only known from ancient DNA samples ran rampant about 5,000 years ago, ultimately vanishing from the archeological record about 2,000 years later. Called the Late Neolithic Bronze Age (LNBA) plague lineage, scientists have long been puzzled about where the strain came from. Now, we are close to an answer.
For the first time, archeologists and anthropologists have identified this ancient plague in an animal: a 4,000-year-old domesticated sheep excavated in present-day Russia. The plague appears to have infected both humans and sheep that spread from a wild animal source, just like the bubonic plague. The increased sheep herding in the area during the Bronze Age brought humans into closer contact with the animals and may have led to the spread of this disease. The findings are detailed in a study published August 11 in the journal Cell and reveal that sheep played a role in this disease spillover.