The Neolithic culture in Europe that produced megastructures such as Stonehenge went into a major decline around 5400 years ago. Now we have the best evidence yet that this was due to plague.
Sequencing of ancient DNA from 108 individuals who lived in northern Europe at this time has revealed that the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis was present in 18 of them when they died.
Over the past decade, studies of ancient human DNA have revealed that local populations didn’t fully recover from the Neolithic decline. Instead, they were largely replaced by other people moving in from the Eurasian steppes. In Britain, by around 4000 years ago, for instance, less than 10 per cent of the population was derived from the people who built Stonehenge.
These studies of ancient humans also revealed several cases where the plague bacterium was present. This suggested a potential explanation – the plague might have wiped out Europe’s population, allowing the steppes people to move in with little opposition.
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There seem to have been three separate outbreaks of the plague over these generations. The last outbreak was caused by a strain with reshuffled genes that might have been much more dangerous.
It’s present in a lot of individuals,” says [Frederik Seersholm at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark]. “And it’s all the same version, which is exactly what you would expect if something spreads very quickly.”
