Plague in humans 'twice as old' but didn't begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals
Thursday, October 22, 2015 - 13:00
in Paleontology & Archaeology
New research dates plague back to the early Bronze Age, showing it had been endemic in humans across Eurasia for millennia prior to first recorded global outbreak, and that ancestral plague mutated into its bubonic, flea-borne form between the 2nd and 1st millennium BC.