Was Neolithic Europe the source of the plague?

[Angela]

See:

Nicolas Rascovan, Karl-Goran Sjogren,Kristian Kristiansen, Rasmus Nielsen,Eske Willerslev, Christelle Desnues, Simon Rasmussen

"Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages ofYersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline"

https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674(18)31464-8

Maybe and maybe not. I'll wait to see what the Johannes Krause group has to say. Willerslev is not, in my own personal opinion, always right. This may be the basal lineage, but did it exist in steppe animals like the marmot first? Trade went in both directions even at that time.

Whether or not this is correct, we know that the more northern European you are, the more likely it is that you have alleles that are protective against this and HIV as well. Now, the differences are not huge, but they exist, and could have definitely impacted survival rates of the European farmers versus the steppe people.

Not saying they got the hypothesis from us, but I was saying here years ago that the mass burnings of settlements in the Balkans might have been because of pestilence.

"Highlights Discovery of the most ancient case of plague in humans,4,900 years ago in Swedend Basal lineages of Y. pestis emerged and spread during theNeolithic declined Plague infections in distinct Eurasian populations duringNeolithic and Bronze Aged A plague pandemic likely emerged in large settlements andspread over trade routes."

Between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, many Neolithicsocieties declined throughout western Eurasia dueto a combination of factors that are still largelydebated. Here, we report the discovery and genomereconstruction of Yersinia pestis, the etiologicalagent of plague, in Neolithic farmers in Sweden,pre-dating and basal to all modern and ancientknown strains of this pathogen. We investigated thehistory of this strain by combining phylogenetic andmolecular clock analyses of the bacterial genome,detailed archaeological information, and genomicanalyses from infected individuals and hundreds ofancient human samples across Eurasia. These analysesrevealed that multiple and independent lineagesof Y. pestis branched and expanded acrossEurasia during the Neolithic decline, spreadingmost likely through early trade networks rather thanmassive human migrations. Our results are consistentwith the existence of a prehistoric plaguepandemic that likely contributed to the decay ofNeolithic populations in Europe.

 

[Angela]

More skeptics: Ewen Callaway

"The scientists say their discovery suggests that plague emerged and spread through Europe earlier than was previously thought — but others aren’t so convinced.
The Y. pestis sequences are as old as any known plague strain — and they sit closer than any other to the base of the deadly pathogen’s evolutionary tree. “We are at the beginning of the evolution of this disease,” says Simon Rasmussen, a computational biologist at the University of Copenhagen who led the study, published on 6 December in Cell1.
Other scientists say the strain’s discovery is significant — but that it doesn’t back up the authors’ bold claims about the spread of plague through Neolithic Europe. “I don’t think it is definitive, and in three to five years, people might think differently,” says Mark Achtman, a bacterial population geneticist at the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK."

"In 2015, Rasmussen’s team discovered4 plague DNA sequences in individuals with steppe ancestry, and they and other scientists proposed that these groups seeded outbreaks of the disease in late Neolithic populations. But his team now wonders whether plague had swept through Europe before the arrival of steppe populations.
[h=2]Emerging pathogen[/h]The new strain come from two individuals found buried in a Neolithic settlement in western Sweden. Rasmussen’s team identified Y. pestis sequences in publicly available data from previous studies that examined the genetics of the region’s human inhabitants."

"Achtman is glad to see two new plague genomes — especially from strains so deep in the bacterium’s evolutionary tree — but questions the conclusion. “The rest is speculation, but interesting speculation,” he says. “I like it and will recommend it to my students. But I don’t think it will be the last word.”"

"Johannes Krause, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, is more critical and says the suggestions are not backed up by data. “The authors speculate about the emergence in central Eastern Europe and dissemination by trade. They have no plague genomes from there,” he says.
In 2017, his team suggested5 that plague entered Europe during the Neolithic and was then spread by individuals with steppe ancestry, on the basis of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age plague genomes. Nothing in the latest paper changes his view, he says."

 

[bicicleur 2]

it's what I told when spread of Y Pestis was discussed first time
neolithic populations crashed centuries before the supposed arrival of the plague from the steppe

 

[bicicleur 2]

spread through trade contacts rather than massive migrations makes sense to me

pointing to Trypillia is speculative but plausible untill someone comes up with another more plausible suggestion

 

[gidai]

But why Yersinia pestis have a predilection only for farmers?

 

[Pip]

spread through trade contacts rather than massive migrations makes sense to me

pointing to Trypillia is speculative but plausible untill someone comes up with another more plausible suggestion

What if the spread of Cucuteni Tripolye people was contemporary with the spread of Steppe DNA (and that the actual first arrival date for Steppe DNA is significantly earlier than the supposed date)? Just because Steppe DNA blossomed in the early third millennium BC, this does not mean that it did not arrive until that date. Indeed, data would suggest that it arrived in at least several distant pockets some considerable time before 3,000 BC.
I would suggest that if Trypillia is a plausible source, then so is the Steppe.

 

[Pip]

See:

Nicolas Rascovan, Karl-Goran Sjogren,Kristian Kristiansen, Rasmus Nielsen,Eske Willerslev, Christelle Desnues, Simon Rasmussen

"Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages ofYersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline"

https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674(18)31464-8

Maybe and maybe not. I'll wait to see what the Johannes Krause group has to say. Willerslev is not, in my own personal opinion, always right. This may be the basal lineage, but did it exist in steppe animals like the marmot first? Trade went in both directions even at that time.

Whether or not this is correct, we know that the more northern European you are, the more likely it is that you have alleles that are protective against this and HIV as well. Now, the differences are not huge, but they exist, and could have definitely impacted survival rates of the European farmers versus the steppe people.

Not saying they got the hypothesis from us, but I was saying here years ago that the mass burnings of settlements in the Balkans might have been because of pestilence.

"Highlights Discovery of the most ancient case of plague in humans,4,900 years ago in Swedend Basal lineages of Y. pestis emerged and spread during theNeolithic declined Plague infections in distinct Eurasian populations duringNeolithic and Bronze Aged A plague pandemic likely emerged in large settlements andspread over trade routes."

Between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, many Neolithicsocieties declined throughout western Eurasia dueto a combination of factors that are still largelydebated. Here, we report the discovery and genomereconstruction of Yersinia pestis, the etiologicalagent of plague, in Neolithic farmers in Sweden,pre-dating and basal to all modern and ancientknown strains of this pathogen. We investigated thehistory of this strain by combining phylogenetic andmolecular clock analyses of the bacterial genome,detailed archaeological information, and genomicanalyses from infected individuals and hundreds ofancient human samples across Eurasia. These analysesrevealed that multiple and independent lineagesof Y. pestis branched and expanded acrossEurasia during the Neolithic decline, spreadingmost likely through early trade networks rather thanmassive human migrations. Our results are consistentwith the existence of a prehistoric plaguepandemic that likely contributed to the decay ofNeolithic populations in Europe.

If plague protection is higher in Northern (rather than Eastern) Europe, does this not suggest a spread from the Baltic, rather than the Steppe?

 

[markod]

If plague protection is higher in Northern (rather than Eastern) Europe, does this not suggest a spread from the Baltic, rather than the Steppe?

The mutation that confers plague resistance needs not necessarily have evolved with the population that first spread the plague. Central Asians with heavy steppe admixture aren't very resistant either:

Have WHG genomes been screened for CCR5-Δ32?

 

[Angela]

The mutation that confers plague resistance needs not necessarily have evolved with the population that first spread the plague. Central Asians with heavy steppe admixture aren't very resistant either:

Have WHG genomes been screened for CCR5-Δ32?

I don't know, but they should. Look what they found when they went looking in the Gok set of samples.

Maybe Bicicleur is correct, but this Willerslev paper doesn't prove anything.

It's not just that they didn't examine or perhaps examined and didn't find plague in the central European MN populations (I have to go back and read the paper more carefully to see if they did test any others.)

It's also that who knows which other samples they'll find on the steppe or at the steppe/farmer border if they test all of them.

One point about plague spreading without people. I once posted a paper showing how the Northwest Coast Indians contracted (and died from) smallpox before any movement of settlers in the area. The speculation was that it was on the blankets traded there, which came from white settlers further east.

It's certainly true that apparently smallpox can be spread through contaminated clothing, unlike measles where the person has to cough on you, although the virus can live for a few hours outside a human body.
https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/smallpox/fact_sheet

With bubonic plague, the transmission is through the bite of an infected flea, so presumably clothing or cloth could harbor them, I suppose. I don't know. Did the MN people make and trade cloth at the time? Certainly, if the steppe people were trading furs, they would harbor fleas as well.

The thing is, though, that a rapid spread because of crowded living conditions is one thing, the origin in such places is another. They need not be the same place. Just as, as Markod said, the place with the most immunity may not be where it originated. However, it's interesting that they found the basal form in Gokland in the north, and that's where there's more immunity. Who knows, maybe that was behind the bit of WHG resurgence. Maybe it was just that they had a bit of an immunity to it.

Fwiw, plague can still be found in the marmosets of the steppe. That's the reservoir animal in Europe today. It's also in small rodents of the American southwest, who caught it from urban rodents.

"The plague came to the West Coast via rodents that hitched rides with early industrial ships during the third major pandemic that started in China. These Chinese pests mingled with urban harbor rats. The fleas that bit these rats bit humans, causing the disease to spread. The last plague epidemic in the United States was in Los Angeles in 1924 to 1925. It killed only about a dozen people."
https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/30/health/plague-hotspots-in-united-states/index.html

 

[Cpluskx]

This looks solid. Also as Angela said it explains the WHG resurgence too.

 

[Cpluskx]

This also makes it more unlikely that Indo-Europeans invaded Anatolia from Balkans too. They probably took over Cucuteni Tripolye mainly because of this plague's weakening of the area, if the same plague wasn't present and wrecking Anatolia too it would very hard for them to do a elite takeover.

 

[Lenab]

This also makes it more unlikely that Indo-Europeans invaded Anatolia from Balkans too. They probably took over Cucuteni Tripolye mainly because of this plague's weakening of the area, if the same plague wasn't present and wrecking Anatolia too it would very hard for them to do a elite takeover.

Not unlikely as all the ''Indo Europeans'' can't just hang around Anatolia forever, besides you're forgetting the great flood.

 

[Johane Derite]

This also makes it more unlikely that Indo-Europeans invaded Anatolia from Balkans too. They probably took over Cucuteni Tripolye mainly because of this plague's weakening of the area, if the same plague wasn't present and wrecking Anatolia too it would very hard for them to do a elite takeover.

Why does it make it more unlikely?

 

[markod]

I don't know, but they should. Look what they found when they went looking in the Gok set of samples.

Maybe Bicicleur is correct, but this Willerslev paper doesn't prove anything.

It's not just that they didn't examine or perhaps examined and didn't find plague in the central European MN populations (I have to go back and read the paper more carefully to see if they did test any others.)

It's also that who knows which other samples they'll find on the steppe or at the steppe/farmer border if they test all of them.

One point about plague spreading without people. I once posted a paper showing how the Northwest Coast Indians contracted (and died from) smallpox before any movement of settlers in the area. The speculation was that it was on the blankets traded there, which came from white settlers further east.

It's certainly true that apparently smallpox can be spread through contaminated clothing, unlike measles where the person has to cough on you, although the virus can live for a few hours outside a human body.
https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/smallpox/fact_sheet

With bubonic plague, the transmission is through the bite of an infected flea, so presumably clothing or cloth could harbor them, I suppose. I don't know. Did the MN people make and trade cloth at the time? Certainly, if the steppe people were trading furs, they would harbor fleas as well.

The thing is, though, that a rapid spread because of crowded living conditions is one thing, the origin in such places is another. They need not be the same place. Just as, as Markod said, the place with the most immunity may not be where it originated. However, it's interesting that they found the basal form in Gokland in the north, and that's where there's more immunity. Who knows, maybe that was behind the bit of WHG resurgence. Maybe it was just that they had a bit of an immunity to it.

Fwiw, plague can still be found in the marmosets of the steppe. That's the reservoir animal in Europe today. It's also in small rodents of the American southwest, who caught it from urban rodents.

"The plague came to the West Coast via rodents that hitched rides with early industrial ships during the third major pandemic that started in China. These Chinese pests mingled with urban harbor rats. The fleas that bit these rats bit humans, causing the disease to spread. The last plague epidemic in the United States was in Los Angeles in 1924 to 1925. It killed only about a dozen people."
https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/30/health/plague-hotspots-in-united-states/index.html

As I understand it, CCR5-Δ32 confers a significant advantage with respect to several common diseases because it allows the body to clear both viruses and bacteria much more easily. I think significant aid in the recovery from HPV, HIV, types of hepatitis and sepsis have been observed. The question to me is whether a mutation like that would have been advantageous enough to be selected for already in WHG-type hunter gatherers. As you mentioned, it would explain their resurgence despite the fact that they didn't have much going for them in terms of technologies and the like.

 

[bicicleur 2]

The mutation that confers plague resistance needs not necessarily have evolved with the population that first spread the plague. Central Asians with heavy steppe admixture aren't very resistant either:

Have WHG genomes been screened for CCR5-Δ32?

this map is the situation today, I guess, not 4.9 ka ?

 

[bicicleur 2]

What if the spread of Cucuteni Tripolye people was contemporary with the spread of Steppe DNA (and that the actual first arrival date for Steppe DNA is significantly earlier than the supposed date)? Just because Steppe DNA blossomed in the early third millennium BC, this does not mean that it did not arrive until that date. Indeed, data would suggest that it arrived in at least several distant pockets some considerable time before 3,000 BC.
I would suggest that if Trypillia is a plausible source, then so is the Steppe.

TMRCA of Gökhem and Bronze Age Y Pestis is 5,7 ka, very likely the date of the first outbreak
Tripolye was very densely populated, very favourable for the outbreak of a plague.
Yamna was mobile, favourable for spread of the plague.
But afaik, steppe people hadn't reached Scandinavia yet by 4,9 ka, but Global Amphora had.

As I said :

pointing to Trypillia is speculative but plausible untill someone comes up with another more plausible suggestion

 

[bicicleur 2]

Maybe Bicicleur is correct, but this Willerslev paper doesn't prove anything.

My understanding is that Y Pestis in 4.9 ka in Gökhem is proven.
Also, TMRCA for this Y Pestis and Bronze Age Y Pestis has been established.
Decline of neolithic population since 5.5 ka, I allready told about it when discussing first paper on Y Pestis.
What is the origin and how it spread, is speculation.

For the spread, it is connecting dates and places on the map, and checking trade, migrations, and who was there.

We need more dates and places.

Fwiw, plague can still be found in the marmosets of the steppe. That's the reservoir animal in Europe today. It's also in small rodents of the American southwest, who caught it from urban rodents.

I don't know how they were constructed in the neolithic, but wouldn't rodents be attracted to granaries for food and to the warmth in houses during wintertimes?

 

[bicicleur 2]

But why Yersinia pestis have a predilection only for farmers?

it doesn't

I guess many more samples will be screened now

there may be a succession of papers on this topics in a few months

 

[Angela]

bicicleur;560581]My understanding is that Y Pestis in 4.9 ka in Gökhem is proven.
Also, TMRCA for this Y Pestis and Bronze Age Y Pestis has been established.
Decline of neolithic population since 5.5 ka, I allready told about it when discussing first paper on Y Pestis.

Well, clearly he has the proof for Gok. Who could doubt it?

As for the "TMRCA" for this Y Pestis, let's see if more samples of this Basal strain show up and when and where.

Everyone has know for years that some crisis had hit the MN populations of Central Europe and the Balkans before the mass arrival of the steppe people. Scholars like David Anthony have been speculating about the causes for a long time, as have we.

My point was that he hasn't proven the existence of Y pestis in those proto-cities. It's all speculation, which is what we do here, but what I don't expect from a major genetics lab. He took a gamble, and he may very well be right, but it's not good scholarship.

He's a showboater. That's why I take all his papers with a grain of salt.

We need more dates and places.

We certainly do.

I don't know how they were constructed in the neolithic, but wouldn't rodents be attracted to granaries for food and to the warmth in houses during wintertimes?

Indeed they would, which would explain why farmers like cats.

That explains the spread. Does it mean it arose in that locale, in those rodents?

It's like tuberculosis. It's apparently as old as man. It really likes crowded conditions, however.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...tself-how-tb-took-over-the-world-8793572.html

 

[bicicleur 2]

Well, clearly he has the proof for Gok. Who could doubt it?

As for the "TMRCA" for this Y Pestis, let's see if more samples of this Basal strain show up and when and where.

Everyone has know for years that some crisis had hit the MN populations of Central Europe and the Balkans before the mass arrival of the steppe people. Scholars like David Anthony have been speculating about the causes for a long time, as have we.

My point was that he hasn't proven the existence of Y pestis in those proto-cities. It's all speculation, which is what we do here, but what I don't expect from a major genetics lab. He took a gamble, and he may very well be right, but it's not good scholarship.

He's a showboater. That's why I take all his papers with a grain of salt.



We certainly do.



Indeed they would, which would explain why farmers like cats.

That explains the spread. Does it mean it arose in that locale, in those rodents?

It's like tuberculosis. It's apparently as old as man. It really likes crowded conditions, however.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...tself-how-tb-took-over-the-world-8793572.html

what do you mean by proto-cities?
do you mean the 4.2 ka - 4 ka burning of villages near the Danube delta which David Anthony was talking about?
that was before the Y Pestis TMRCA calculated in this paper

they speculate about the origin and the spread, and point to Tripylia, connecting dates and places
but the authors of the first Y Pestis paper did exactly the same when they pointed to Yamna and Afanasievo

IMO Tripylia is a good guess with the data at hand, but I would be surprised if that won't change the next few years with more incoming data