News

4 thousand-year-old sheep DNA reveals livestock’s role in spreading Bronze Age plague

Four thousand years ago, a sheep in the Eurasian Steppe carried a lethal bacterium that once swept across continents. The ...

Ancient animal bones unlock clues about Bronze Age plague

For the first time, archeologists and anthropologists have identified this ancient plague in an animal: a 4,000-year-old ...

Livestock played a role in prehistoric plague infections

To try to solve the puzzle of how the infection persisted and spread over thousands of years in Eurasia, an international ...
Front Page Detectives on MSN1d

Precursor of Black Death Detected in 4,000-Year-Old Sheep Excavated in Russia: Study

Precursor of Black Death Detected in 4,000-Year-Old Sheep Excavated in Russia: Study A prehistoric form of Black Death seems ...

Plague mysteriously spread from Europe to Asia thousands of years ago. Scientists now think they know how it was transmitted

Researchers recovered the first Yersinia pestis bacteria genome from a Bronze Age animal. It reveals how a plague spread in ...

Harvard researcher: Ancient livestock may have carried plague across Eurasia

Study by Max Planck Institute and partners detects the late neolithic bronze age plague strain in a 4,000-year-old Arkaim sheep, linking human and animal infections.