In rural Sweden, 20 years ago, archaeologists discovered an ancient mass grave with many bone remains.
When they recently examined teeth belonging to the skull of a 20-year-old woman from this burial, they found traces of the plague bacillus Yersinia Pestis.
A little later, the same thing was found in a male skeleton from the same grave, but in the remains of a woman traces of the plague stick were preserved much better (paranormal-news.ru).
The woman lived from 5040 to 4867 years ago.
Comparing the found strain with known plague strains, scientists realized that they were dealing with the "very first version" of the plague bacillus, which apparently severely crippled the ancient population of Europe 5 thousand years ago.
Scientists suspect that the plague first engulfed the so-called carriers of the Trypillian culture in Eastern Europe (the territories of modern Romania, Ukraine and Moldova), which blossomed about 6 thousand years ago.
Trypillian culture.
But 5400 years ago, having existed for only a few hundred years, they disappeared, apparently because of the plague. Trying to escape, they burned their homes and villages and went to Europe along trade routes, while carrying the infection with them.
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From the Trypillian culture, the plague went south, mowing down the carriers of the Yamnaya culture, and north to Scandinavia. Earlier, Simon Rasmussen and others believed that the plague was brought to Europe by the carriers of the Yamnaya culture, and it came to them from Asia.
Why did the plague arise in the Trypillian culture? Simon Rasmussen believes crowding and lack of hygiene are to blame.
According to scientists, the world should not worry that an ancient strain of plague could be dangerous to modern humans. Because it was not the strain itself that was found, but fragments of its DNA.
Before the Swedish find, the earliest large-scale plague epidemic was the so-called Justinian plague, which arose in Byzantium and the Mediterranean in the middle of the 6th century. It has claimed the lives of over 100 million people.
After that, the largest plague epidemic was the European plague of the 14th century, which was called the "black death". This plague wiped out about a third of Europe's population.
Plague of Justinian.
