Sent in by William – https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/10/science/plague-ancient-dna-europe-first-farmers/index.html … ancient DNA reveals the possible cause of the mysterious population collapse 5000 years ago – the plague. We are talking here about the 3000BC event – otherwise known as the Piorra Oscillation. Until now there have only been two plague victims at this time – one in Latvia and the other in Sweden. One reason why it was not regarded as evidence of a wider outbreak of the plague. However, a new study based on DNA from 108 individuals unearthed at nine grave sites in Sweden and Denmark suggest the ancient form of the plague may have been more widespread amongst Europe’s first farmers. It could explain why the population mysteriously collapsed over a few hundred years. The collapse is firmly attested all over northern Europe – including France. People simply disappear from the archaeological record. However, their legacy seems to live on – in the many megalithic graves and monuments from the 4th millennium BC. The decline is later defined – as occuring between 5300 and 4900 years ago. The latter date brings us down to the mysterious gap between dynasties 2 and 3 in Egypt [or is that 3 and 4]. Was plague more widespread?
In this instance, as far as northern Europe was concerned, there is no evidence of fleas on rats, as in the 14th century AD Black Death outbreak. This doesn’t mean it was not as virulent – only that fleas were not involved in the transmission. If plague was spread by airborne aerosols it would not have required fleas – or rats. Even though shortly after the mysterious decline in the population there was a migration from the steppe zone north of the Black Sea. That region has been fingered as one of the sources of the Black Death episode. Yet, in this instance, they arrive after the decline, and seem to prosper.
CNN continues by saying, all of a sudden there is no people being buried in the megalithic graves. Violence is discarded but one historian has suggested an agricultural crisis of some undisclosed kind. Smoke and mirrors, perhaps. The decline was followed by the migration into Europe of the Yamnaya people from the steppe zone. They also appear to have invaded the Middle East and were responsible for the novel new graves at Ur, that resemble kurgans on the Russian steppe. The newcomers are said to have arrived in Europe after a gap in the archaeology.
Genetic information about pathogens can be preserved in human DNA, and yersinia pestis, the plague, was the most common pathogen found in the research batch. Even then it only involved 18 individuals out of 108. This means the evidence is circumstantial. DNA can only be extracted from well preserved human remains. So, somewhat inconclusive, in spite of the headline. Not only that, the DNA of plague was found over 4 generations – suggesting the opposite of a mass die off of people. In fact, they seem to have carried the pathogene over a long time – but the plague has a habit of rumbling back into life as it did across Europe over several centuries after the Black Death. In other words, there must have been something else going on and it was not just plague that was responsible for depopulation.
See also https://phys.org/news/2024-07-plague-decimate-neolithic-farmers-years.html … Here we are told three distinct waves of plague spread through the population over a period of 120 years. Plague could have constributed to a decline in Neolithic populations in Europe. Analysis of fossil pollen from plants and trees preserved in bogs and lake sediments also suggests that areas previously cleared for farming were then followed by a period of regrowth of woodland. Did people simply move away – as in migrate in order to distance themselves from whatever had happened. Population decline is not in doubt but the idea that plague was responsible is open to question. In Britain the evidence of plague is from the Early Bronze Age = the second half of the third millennium BC. Or, in old termology, and dating methodology, after 2300BC. That is now 2500BC in the Bayesian methodology – per IntCal. That also involved a mysterious decline in the Neolithic population – and the arrival of migrants from the Low Countries. The Beaker Folk as they are known. They too had Yamnaya genes – derived from the people that had arrived circa 3000BC in East and Central Europe.