Levens Park Ring Cologne, Cumbria, England, where Yersinia pestis was found in the teeth of a Bronze Age woman
Ian Hodkinson
Ancient DNA evidence shows that the bacterium that causes the plague first reached Britain at least 4,000 years ago.
Yersinia pestis He is best known for his role in the Black Death, which killed a third of Europe’s population in the 14th century.th century. In 2021, the oldest known plague strain was found in a skull buried in Latvia 5,000 years ago.
Pooja Swali of the Francis Crick Institute in London and others found 30 teeth found at Charterhouse Warren Farm mass grave in Somerset and buried at Levens Park Ring Cairn in Cumbria, England. We examined the teeth of four people who had been exposed.
DNA tests on the teeth of two children from Charterhouse and a woman from Levens Park tested positive. Yersinia pestis. This is the first evidence that Yersinia pestis spread from continental Europe to England during the Bronze Age.
Swari said the strain was nearly identical to a strain found in Germany around the same time. This strain has no genetic mutations that allow later bacteria to be transmitted by fleas.
“This study is the first to document the spread of the plague to England during the late Neolithic period,” says Monica Green of the Medieval Academy of America in Massachusetts. Given the established links between continental Europe and Britain during this period, she says, this is not particularly surprising. “Still, the fact that what we think of as rodent disease could travel this far is remarkable.”
Considering the considerable distance between the two burial sites, researchers are probably thinking: Yersinia pestis It became widespread throughout England during the Bronze Age.
“It’s very interesting to map the distribution of things that were previously unknown.” Yersinia It’s a tension that goes back a long time,” said Hendrik Poiner of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.
A body found at Charterhouse shows signs of an extremely violent death, raising questions as to why he was killed. “The trauma inflicted on the group as a whole could have something to do with the fact that there was an epidemic of plague within the group,” says Green. “In fact, there are other plague-related burials in medieval Europe that suggest a fear-based response to the plague outbreak. It is most prominently seen in cemeteries where
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