JAKARTA - The traces of plague disease are older than expected. Scientists have found evidence of DNA of the bacteria that cause plague in the remains of ancient humans in Siberia that are about 5,500 years old.
The Independent, quoted Saturday, June 20, reported that this finding pushed the history of plague about 200 years back from the oldest evidence previously known. Plague is now rare and can be treated with antibiotics, but the disease was once one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history, including when the Black Death hit Europe in the 14th century.
A team of researchers led by Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist from the University of Copenhagen, examined human remains from four cemeteries near Lake Baikal, Siberia.
"To understand our own history, we believe understanding the history of the fish is very important," said Willerslev.
Researchers analyzed teeth from 18 ancient hunters-gatherers. From there, they found the DNA remains of the bacteria that cause plague. Ancient DNA is genetic material that is still left in the bones, teeth, or tissues of living things from the past.
Carbon dating suggests there were two distinct outbreaks. The earliest cases emerged around 5,500 years ago.
According to a study published in the journal Nature, the prehistoric plague likely evolved gradually and attacked several small families. The disease is suspected to have spread from marmots, the local large rodents, when humans ate their raw organs or touched the skin of infected animals when cut.
The study's authors also said the disease can be transmitted between humans through coughing and sneezing.
Many of the victims are children aged eight to eleven years. One of the researchers' suspicions is that their immune systems are weaker.
This finding also shows the human side of the ancient plague. Three girls were found buried side by side. Two of them are believed to be cousins. There is also an aunt and her nephew who were buried together.
"The people who buried the bodies knew who they were when they were alive. That's a very human element of all this scientific work," said Ruairidh Macleod, an ancient DNA expert from the University of Oxford who co-authored the study.
Geneticist Aida Andrades Valtueña from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who was not involved in the research, said the large number of victims showed that prehistoric pes was able to trigger both single cases and wider outbreaks.
According to The Independent, this ancient strain developed long before bubonic plague, the type of plague that triggered the Black Death in medieval Europe. A strain is a group or variant of bacteria that has certain genetic characteristics.
The finding is important because the initial outbreak was thought to be equally deadly. Pes not only hit densely populated cities, but also small groups of hunter-gatherers who lived nomadically.
Andrades Valtueña said understanding the early evolution of pes could help scientists see how bacteria turned into deadly pathogens. Pathogens are disease-causing organisms. The knowledge could also provide clues about how new pathogens emerge in the future.
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