{"id":262584,"date":"2025-07-13T21:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T21:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/262584\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T21:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T21:41:10","slug":"ancient-dna-study-suggests-one-thing-is-to-blame-for-new-era-of-disease-in-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/262584\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient DNA study suggests one thing is to blame for \u2018new era of disease\u2019 in humans"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 37,000 years of infectious diseases<\/a> in humans have been mapped by scientists, with academics pointing to one particular behaviour from our ancestors as playing a \u201ckey role\u201d in their spread.<\/p>\n

Involving researchers linked to British; Danish; Swedish; German; Italian, and Australian universities, the study saw them analyse DNA<\/a> from more than 1,300 prehistoric humans dating back as far as 37,000 years ago, and recovered DNA relating to 214 known pathogens (so bacteria, viruses and parasites).<\/p>\n

It led to the academics discovering the oldest genetic trace of the bacterium responsible for the plague – or Yersinia pestis, to use its Latin name – in a sample from 5,500 years ago.<\/p>\n

They also found traces of leprosy from 1,400 years ago, malaria from 4,200 years ago, hepatitis B from 9,800 years ago, and diphtheria from 11,100 years ago.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the earliest evidence of zoonotic diseases \u2013 that is, illnesses transmitted from animals to humans, like the present-day coronavirus<\/a> \u2013 dates back to around 6,500 years ago, before they became more widespread 5,000 years ago.<\/p>\n

What was likely to blame for that? Farming.<\/p>\n

Study lead Professor Eske Willserslev, of the Universities of Cambridge<\/a> and Copenhagen<\/a>, said: \u201cWe\u2019ve long suspected that the transition to farming and animal husbandry [cultivation of animals] opened the door to a new era of disease \u2013 now DNA shows us that it happened at least 6,500 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese infections didn\u2019t just cause illness \u2013 they may have contributed to population collapse, migration, and genetic adaptation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crikey.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0– YouTube\u00a0\u00a0www.youtube.com<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, the zoonotic diseases became more widespread approximately 5,000 years ago, around the same time that a group of people migrated from what is today known as parts of Ukraine, southwest Russia and western Kazakhstan (the \u2018Pontic Steppe\u2019) to northwestern Europe.<\/p>\n

Associate Professor Martin Sikora of the University of Copenhagen, who also worked on the study, said: \u201cIf we understand what happened in the past, it can help us prepare for the future. Many of the newly emerging infectious diseases are predicted to originate from animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Willerslev added that successful mutations in the past are \u201clikely to reappear\u201d, with this knowledge being important for future vaccines.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt allows us to test whether current vaccines provide sufficient coverage or whether new ones need to be developed due to mutations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The study was published in the journal Nature<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Why not read\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 37,000 years of infectious diseases in humans have been mapped by scientists, with academics pointing to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3846],"tags":[1493,49075,2342,3908,267,105,729,12,100416,2343,70,5882,16,15,29957,66817],"class_list":{"0":"post-262584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-bacteria","9":"tag-copenhagen","10":"tag-disease","11":"tag-dna","12":"tag-genetics","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-nature","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-parasites","17":"tag-research","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-study","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-university-of-cambridge","23":"tag-viruses"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114848103327132983","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}