Hunter-gatherers in Siberia died of plague 5,500 years ago

So much for that theory.

Welcome to the first graveyard of the global pandemic

The Angara River flows from the bottom of Lake Baikal. The people who lived along this lake thousands of years ago survived by hunting, hunting, and fishing. They would have lived in small groups, but they seem to have been connected over hundreds of miles through marriage and family ties. Although their lives would have been in constant motion, they buried their dead in tombs such as Ust’-Ida, covering them with offerings of clay pots, stone tools, and bones and tips.

This map shows the location of the tombs of Ust’-Ida I and Shumilikha near Lake Baikal and the Angara River.

Credit: By Tara Young, taray@ualberta.ca and NASA https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/api/ – NASA provided free GDEM https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/api/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21156871

In Ust’-Ida, the archaeologists of the Baikal Archeology Project found a sad secret: a surprising number of dead children, many radiocarbon dates show that most of the people in the graves died at the same time, and there is no evidence of violence. Something tragic happened to an ancient group of hunters and gatherers, but what? Archaeologists thought ancient DNA could shed light on the mystery.

Macleod and his colleagues started with shotgun sequencing, a technique used to identify the DNA of a sample when scientists do not know exactly what species they are looking for. They used samples from the roots of 46 ancient human teeth from four different burial sites along the Angara River.

And to their complete surprise, they found the plague.

Fun fact: Because the roots of the teeth are fed by many blood vessels, everything in your blood passes through the teeth at some point, meaning that if you die of plague, its DNA can be left behind in the teeth. “This is the best evidence that the plague was in the blood, which is dangerous,” said Frederik Seersholm, an expert in ancient DNA research at the University of Copenhagen who knows an interesting fact when he sees one, at a press conference.

About 11 of the 31 people Macleod and his colleagues tested in Ust’-Ida had it Y. insects The DNA in their teeth, and Macleod says it “matches almost everyone (in the graves) who died of the plague,” not just the 11. That’s because the detectable level of plague DNA in Ust’-Ida’s ruins is comparable to that of Smithfield’s, a well-known cemetery especially for plague victims in London. It is safe to assume that whoever was placed there had the plague.