Traces of Yersinia pestis bacteria were found in teeth of people buried at bronze age sites in Cumbria and Somerset
bacteria were found in the teeth of individuals at the Levens Park ring cairn monument near Kendal, and Charterhouse Warren in the Mendips, a site where at least 40 men, women and children were buried, dismembered, in a natural shaft.Photograph: Tony Audsley
Swali was working in the laboratory late one Friday night when the significance of the findings became clear. “I had my eureka moment, but there was no one to share it with,” she said. “There was a moment of ‘Wow. This is the earliest ever plague genome in Britain’.” DNA analysis showed that all three individuals were infected with a form of Yersinia pestis that lacked the yapC and ymt genes seen in later strains. The ymt gene played an important role in allowing the plague to be spread by fleas, leading to the bubonic form of the disease which triggered devastating pandemics such as the Black Death, which killed half of the European population in the 14th century., which causes fever, headache, weakness and pneumonia as the bacteria take hold in the lungs.
“The finding of plague was completely unexpected, as this disease leaves no traces on the skeleton,” he added. “At the moment we’re not sure how this new evidence fits into the story of what happened at the site, and whether or not there may be some connection between the disease and the violence.”
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