ArticleCommunications biology2024
Neolithic Yersinia pestis infections in humans and a dog.
Article in Communications biology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- A prehistoric East-Asian Yersinia pestis genome and a ~5.3 ka trans-Eurasian expansion of plague.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Ancestry, admixture, and pathogens in contemporaneous Neolithic farmers and foragers on the Island of Gotland.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Recent Microbial Evolutionary Insights From Metagenomics.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Review
- Ancient DNA insights into diverse pathogens and their hosts.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Commentary on Seersholm Et al.: Yersinia pestis Infection Is Not Synonymous With Deadly Plague in Neolithic Scandinavia.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Conceptualizing emergent animal farming and infectious diseases: a One Health framework.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Yersinia pestis has been infecting humans since the Late Neolithic (LN). Whether those early infections were isolated zoonoses or initiators of a pandemic remains unclear. We report Y. pestis infections in two individuals (of 133) from the LN necropolis at Warburg (Germany, 5300-4900 cal BP). Our analyses show that the two genomes belong to distinct strains and reflect independent infection events. All LN genomes known today (n = 4) are basal in the phylogeny and represent separate lineages that probably originated in different animal hosts. In the LN, an opening of the landscape resulted in the introduction of new rodent species, which may have acted as Y. pestis reservoirs. Coincidentally, the number of dogs increased, possibly leading to Y. pestis infections in canines. Indeed, we detect Y. pestis in an LN dog. Collectively, our data suggest that Y. pestis frequently entered human settlements at the time without causing significant outbreaks.
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