Oxford, England-Guardian Evidence of a plague outbreak some 5,500 years ago has been identified in DNA samples taken from the remains of hunters buried in cemeteries in south-eastern Siberia, the report said. A second outbreak probably occurred 400 to 600 years later. Ruairidh MacLeod of the University of Oxford and an international team of researchers suggest that hunter-gatherers were infected with plague bacteria (yersinia pestis) through biting or eating raw marmots, a type of ground squirrel that can act as a reservoir of plague today. The disease probably spreads from person to person in the form of pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs. At least two-thirds of the deceased in the two cemeteries in the study were under the age of 15 at the time of death, and many of them shared a grave with siblings or other family members. To read more research on early plague outbreaks, visit “bronze age plague“
Post Plague outbreak first identified in Siberia first appeared on archeology magazine.