Scientists discovered origins of plague epidemics that destroyed population of Europe

By Alimat Aliyeva

Danish scientists from the University of Copenhagen named the reason for the large-scale extinction of the population of Northern Europe about 5 thousand years ago. According to experts, agricultural communities of the Stone Age became victims of the plague epidemic, Azernews reports.

The origins of the catastrophe, known as the Neolithic collapse, have long been the subject of debate in the scientific community.

In the new study, the team analyzed the DNA of human teeth and bones found throughout Scandinavia. The researchers analyzed the remains of 108 people. Of these, 17% were infected with the plague at the time of their death.

Scientists have compiled a family tree of 38 people across six generations, spanning about 120 years. Genomic data showed that this community had experienced three separate waves of an early form of plague.
Experts found out that the last strain of the plague bacterium turned out to be more contagious than the previous ones and was transmitted from person to person.

A later form of the same pathogen caused the Justinian Plague in the 6th century AD and the Black Plague in the 14th century, which devastated Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, claiming tens of millions of lives.

Since the strains circulating during the Neolithic decline were much earlier versions, the plague could cause different symptoms than those during epidemics millennia later.