Bacterium-the causative agent of plague came to Europe from Central Eurasia.
Archaeologists have stated that the plague happened in Europe in prehistoric times, and the bacterium is the causative agent of plague came to Europe from Central Asia, and then came back.
Researchers studied 560 bones and teeth of ancient people who lived on the territory of modern Russia, Hungary, Croatia, Baltic States and Germany. They found six people who lived in the period 4800-3700 years ago and sick with plague. One of them was from the North Caucasus, one from Croatia, two from Germany and two from Lithuania and Estonia. Researchers have reconstructed and analyzed the genomes of Y. pestis isolated from the remains of all six, and compared them to DNA of modern cultures of Yersinia pestis.
It turned out that the varieties of Y. pestis were divided about six thousand years ago. Based on the results of DNA analysis, the researchers propose two possible scenarios of the appearance of plague in Europe in the period 4800-3700 years ago. The first of them, the plague Bacillus brought several times between five and three thousand years ago, apparently, from Central Eurasia.
Presumably, over a period of about thousand years, the disease has appeared in Europe at least four times: twice in Germany and one time in Estonia and Lithuania and Croatia. In the second scenario the bacteria was brought to Europe from Central Asia only once, and then she was kept here and periodically cause outbreaks of plague. Perhaps from Europe, Y. pestis has “returned” to Central Eurasia.
The authors of the study support the second scenario. They believe that the plague Bacillus appeared in Lithuania and Croatia, together with the nomads who migrated from Central Eurasia into Eastern Europe 4800-4600 years ago. Then, the bacterium has penetrated into Central Europe: Y. pestis, which is found in Germany, are descended from Yersinia pestis, spread in Lithuania. And the youngest was bacteria found on the territory of Russia. She came from Central line 3700-3500 years ago, and possibly “moved” from Europe to southern Siberia.
Previously, scientists found that the first pandemic of plague was on the Ground in the V-IV Millennium BC. In the course of research it was discovered that seven people had been infected by the plague Bacillus. Streamlining the genome of the plague sticks, the researchers came to the conclusion that the six most ancient of them was not like the medieval bubonic plague called “black death”: these bacteria lacked genes pla and ymt, playing a key role in the spread of the plague.
© 2017 – 2019, paradox. All rights reserved.
