Repeated plague infections across six generations of Neolithic Farmers

By Free Republic | Created at 2024-11-17 03:58:34 | Updated at 2024-11-18 05:46:51 1 day ago

Repeated plague infections across six generations of Neolithic Farmers
Nature ^ | July 10, 2024 | Frederik Valeur Seersholm et al

Posted on 11/16/2024 7:51:43 PM PST by SunkenCiv

The emergence of agriculture during the Neolithization brought about one of the most profound lifestyle changes in the history of modern humans. The shift in subsistence strategy from hunting, fishing and gathering to farming paved the way for a marked increase in population density and the establishment of larger and more permanent settlements. However, the flourishing economy of the Neolithic came to a sudden halt in many regions of Northern Europe around 5300–4900 calibrated years before present (cal. bp), in which a marked reduction in the number of human remains radiocarbon-dated to this period suggests a population decline. Coined the Neolithic decline, this demographic bust coincides with the cessation of megalith building in the area and has been suggested to be one of the factors facilitating the Corded Ware expansion into Europe (4800–4400 cal. bp). Although several scenarios have been put forward, no single driving factor has hitherto been linked to this decline and this enigma is still heavily debated in the literature. Nevertheless, recent findings demonstrating that an ancestral form of Yersinia pestis was present in Sweden at this time could potentially solve this debate.

Yersinia pestis, the infectious agent of plague, split from its most recent ancestor Yersinia pseudotuberculosis some time within the past 50,000 years and has been infecting humans since prehistoric times. The vast majority of prehistoric plague genomes are from Late Neolithic and Bronze Age (LNBA) individuals dating to 4700–2400 cal. bp (refs. 7,8,9). These genomes fall within two distinct lineages that can be distinguished by the absence (LNBA−) or presence (LNBA+) of the ymt gene8. The ymt gene is crucial for the bacterium's survival in the flea digestive tract when the source is an infected mouse, black rat or human, and hence for the development of bubonic plague.

(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...

TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; neolithic; yersiniapestis

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1 posted on 11/16/2024 7:51:43 PM PST by SunkenCiv

Full author list: Frederik Valeur Seersholm, Karl-Göran Sjögren, Julia Koelman, Malou Blank, Emma M. Svensson, Jacqueline Staring, Magdalena Fraser, Thomaz Pinotti, Hugh McColl, Charleen Gaunitz, Tatiana Ruiz-Bedoya, Lena Granehäll, Berenice Villegas-Ramirez, Anders Fischer, T. Douglas Price, Morten E. Allentoft, Astrid K. N. Iversen, Tony Axelsson, Torbjörn Ahlström, Anders Götherström, Jan Storå, Kristian Kristiansen, Eske Willerslev, Mattias Jakobsson, Helena Malmström & Martin Sikora

2 posted on 11/16/2024 7:53:18 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)

Abstract: Brucella melitensis is a major livestock bacterial pathogen and zoonosis, causing disease and infection-related abortions in small ruminants and humans. A considerable burden to animal-based economies today, the presence of Brucella in Neolithic pastoral communities has been hypothesised but we lack direct genomic evidence thus far. We report a 3.45X B. melitensis genome preserved in an ~8000 year old sheep specimen from Menteşe Höyük, Northwest Türkiye, demonstrating that the pathogen had evolved and was circulating in Neolithic livestock. The genome is basal with respect to all known B. melitensis and allows the calibration of the B. melitensis speciation time from the primarily cattle-infecting B. abortus to approximately 9800 years Before Present (BP), coinciding with a period of consolidation and dispersal of livestock economies. We use the basal genome to timestamp evolutionary events in B. melitensis, including pseudogenization events linked to erythritol response, the supposed determinant of the pathogen’s placental tropism in goats and sheep. Our data suggest that the development of herd management and multi-species livestock economies in the 11th–9th millennium BP drove speciation and host adaptation of this zoonotic pathogen.An 8000 years old genome reveals the Neolithic origin of the zoonosis Brucella melitensis
Louis L'Hôte, Ian Light, Valeria Mattiangeli, Matthew D. Teasdale,
Áine Halpin, Lionel Gourichon, Felix M. Key & Kevin G. Daly
July 20, 2024
Nature Communications volume 15, Article number: 6132 (2024)

3 posted on 11/16/2024 7:57:06 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)

To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; 31R1O; ...

4 posted on 11/16/2024 7:58:15 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)

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