4,000-year-old DNA unlocks secrets of the plague

The bacterial DNA is thousands of years more ancient than the oldest strain uncovered prior to this latest finding. That strain, identified in 2018 at a burial site known as Edix Hill in Cambridgeshire, was from 1,500 years ago, according to lead study author Pooja Swali, doctoral student in the Skoglund Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

The samples of the plague-causing bacteria were found at two different mass burial sites: one in southwest England in the county of Somerset and the other in the northwestern county of Cumbria, near the border of England and Scotland.

The distance between the sites suggested the disease was widespread during the late Neolithic period and the Bronze Age, Swali said.

“The evidence of widespread transmission across such a vast spatial area in just a few centuries is very interesting and seems to be one aspect of the rapid movement of people, technologies and ideas during this period,” said Dr. Benjamin Roberts, an associate professor of archaeology who researches later European prehistory at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

He was not involved in the study.

How do researchers locate 4,000-year-old bacteria? The team took samples from the skeletal remains of 34 individuals across the two sites, according to the study.

Researchers drilled into the teeth of these ancient people and extracted dental pulp, which can trap remnants of the DNA of infectious diseases.

“The ability to detect ancient pathogens from degraded samples, from thousands of years ago, is incredible,” Swali said. “These genomes can inform us of the spread and evolutionary changes of pathogens in the past, and hopefully help us understand which genes may be important in the spread of infectious diseases.”

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