New
research using ancient DNA has revealed that plague has been endemic in
human populations for more than twice as long as previously thought,
and that the ancestral plague would have been predominantly spread by
human-to-human contact – until genetic mutations allowed
Yersinia pestis (
Y. pestis), the bacteria that causes plague, to survive in the gut of fleas.
These mutations, which may have occurred near the turn of the 1st
millennium BC, gave rise to the bubonic form of plague that spreads at
terrifying speed through flea – and consequently rat – carriers. The
bubonic plague caused the pandemics that decimated global populations,
including the Black Death, which wiped out half the population of Europe
in the 14th century.
Before its flea-borne evolution, however, researchers say that plague
was in fact endemic in the human populations of Eurasia at least 3,000
years before the first plague pandemic in historical records (the Plague
of Justinian in 541 AD).
They say the new evidence that
Y. pestis bacterial infection
in humans actually emerged around the beginning of the Bronze Age
suggests that plague may have been responsible for major population
declines believed to have occurred in the late 4th and early 3rd
millennium BC.
The work was conducted by an international team including researchers
from the universities of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Cambridge, UK, and
the findings are
published today in the journal Cell.
“We found that the
Y. pestis lineage originated and was
widespread much earlier than previously thought, and we narrowed the
time window as to when and how it developed,” said senior author
Professor Eske Willerslev, who recently joined Cambridge University’s
Department of Zoology from the University of Copenhagen.
“The underlying mechanisms that facilitated the evolution of
Y. pestis are present even today. Learning from the past may help us understand how future pathogens may arise and evolve,” he said.
Researchers analysed ancient genomes extracted from the teeth of 101
adults dating from the Bronze Age and found across the Eurasian
landmass.
They found
Y. pestis bacteria in the DNA of seven of the
adults, the oldest of whom died 5,783 years ago – the earliest evidence
of plague. Previously, direct molecular evidence for
Y. pestis had not been obtained from skeletal material older than 1,500 years.
However, six of the seven plague samples were missing two key genetic
components found in most modern strains of plague: a “virulence gene”
called
ymt, and a mutation in an “activator gene” called
pla.
The
ymt gene protects the bacteria from being destroyed by
the toxins in flea guts, so that it multiplies, choking the flea’s
digestive tract. This causes the starving flea to frantically bite
anything it can, and, in doing so, spread the plague.
The mutation in the
pla gene allows
Y. pestis
bacteria to spread across different tissues, turning the localised lung
infection of pneumonic plague into one of the blood and lymph nodes.
Researchers concluded these early strains of plague could not have been carried by fleas without
ymt.
Nor could they cause bubonic plague – which affects the lymphatic
immune system, and inflicts the infamous swollen buboes of the Black
Death – without the
pla mutation.
Consequently, the plague that stalked populations for much of the
Bronze Age must have been pneumonic, which directly affects the
respiratory system and causes desperate, hacking coughing fits just
before death. Breathing around infected people leads to inhalation of
the bacteria, the crux of its human-to-human transmission.
Study co-author Dr Marta Mirazón-Lahr, from Cambridge’s Leverhulme
Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES), points out that a study
earlier this year from Willerslev’s Copenhagen group showed the Bronze
Age to be a highly active migratory period, which could have led to the
spread of pneumonic plague.
“The Bronze Age was a period of major metal weapon production, and it
is thought increased warfare, which is compatible with emerging
evidence of large population movements at the time. If pneumonic plague
was carried as part of these migrations, it would have had devastating
effects on small groups they encountered,” she said.
“Well-documented cases have shown the pneumonic plague’s chain of
infection can go from a single hunter or herder to ravaging an entire
community in two to three days.”
The most recent of the seven ancient genomes to reveal
Y. pestis
in the new study has both of the key genetic mutations, indicating an
approximate timeline for the evolution that spawned flea-borne bubonic
plague.
“Among our samples, the mutated plague strain is first observed in
Armenia in 951 BC, yet is absent in the next most recent sample from
1686 BC – suggesting bubonic strains evolve and become fixed in the late
2nd and very early 1st millennium BC,” said Mirazón-Lahr.
“However, the 1686 BC sample is from the Altai mountains near
Mongolia. Given the distance between Armenia and Altai, it’s also
possible that the Armenian strain of bubonic plague has a longer history
in the Middle East, and that historical movements during the 1st
millennium BC exported it elsewhere.”
The Books of Samuel in the Bible describe an outbreak of plague among
the Philistines in 1320 BC, complete with swellings in the groin, which
the World Health Organization has argued fits the description of
bubonic plague. Mirazón-Lahr suggests this may support the idea of a
Middle Eastern origin for the plague’s highly lethal genetic evolution.
Co-author Professor Robert Foley, also from Cambridge’s LCHES,
suggests that the lethality of bubonic plague may have required the
right population demography before it could thrive.
“Every pathogen has a balance to maintain. If it kills a host before
it can spread, it too reaches a ‘dead end’. Highly lethal diseases
require certain demographic intensity to sustain them.
“The endemic nature of pneumonic plague was perhaps more adapted for
an earlier Bronze Age population. Then, as Eurasian societies grew in
complexity and trading routes continued to open up, maybe the conditions
started to favour the more lethal form of plague,” Foley said.
“The Bronze Age is the edge of history, and ancient DNA is making what happened at this critical time more visible,” he said.
Willerslev added: “These results show that the ancient DNA has the
potential not only to map our history and prehistory, but also discover
how disease may have shaped it.”
Inset image: Map showing where the remains of the Bronze Age plague victims were found.
