Research suggests Black Death Bacterium afflicted longer than Previously Thought

But a new analysis of ancient human DNA shows that the dreaded bacteria emerged at least 3000 years before the first plague pandemic – a time before it mutated into its modern and more virulent form.

But the reason for these migrations was not clear. Morten Allentoft, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen, quipped that: “Perhaps people were migrating to get away from epidemics or recolonizing new areas where epidemics had decimated the local populations”.

To further explore this enigma, an global team drove by Danish analysts, sequenced the DNA pulled from the teeth of 101 Bronze Age people, which were exhumed from around Europe and Asia.

The present day plague bacteria is said to be communicable from one individual to the other and is said to survive in the guts of vectors like fleas. Y. pestis is the microbe that is responsible for the plague. “These Bronze Age strains couldn’t cause bubonic plague, but they caused septicemic plague in the blood and pneumonic plague in the lungs, which you can transmit through the air whenever you sneeze or cough”.

Samples obtained from the human remnants from the Iron Age human (1200 B.C.), hint that around 2,000 years later, Yersinia pestis had developed the ymt gene. In mammals, the immune system has evolved to recognize and mount protective responses against a protein called flagellin, which is the principal component of the flagella-the whip-like appendage that helps bacteria move around.

“Bronze Age Y. pestis lacked a gene called Yersinia murine toxin (ymt)”.

He said that they were surprised to see it 1000’s of years earlier as compared to when it was supposed to exist even though it might just be able to explain a few historical mysteries like the “Plague of Athens”, an epidemic which struck the capital of Greece in 430 BC. Yet, the mutation was not discovered in the two oldest Bronze Age samples, but only in the youngest Bronze Age sample.

Accordingly, the study authors contend: “Our data suggest that Y. pestis did not fully adapt as a flea-borne mammalian pathogen until the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, which precipitated the historically recorded plagues”, noting that the mutations are likely what had allowed the bacteria to nearly magically adapt themselves to live on fleas which, of course, resulted in that epidemic which plagued humans instead onto humans.

Rasmussen said the plague they found was a different strain from the one that caused the three known pandemics, including the Black Death that swept across Medieval Europe.

The research team intends to come up with more studies to reveal more information about the history of the plague.

“It might be that (plague) will eventually burn itself out”, said Brendan Wren, dean of the faculty of infectious and tropical diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

One of the deadliest diseases to ever set foot on the earth was bubonic plague.