In the 14th century, the plague wiped out 50 million people in Europe and Asia. It remains one of the deadliest pandemics in history. But this wasn’t the first time bubonic plague had struck Europe. It had also wiped out Scandinavian populations thousands of years earlier.
The Neolithic Decline, a period in which huge numbers of Northern Europeans died out 5,000 years ago. This continued for 200 years. What happened has always remained a mystery. A 2019 study proved that the bacteria that caused the plague was present in the region at the time. But no one could decipher the extent to which this caused the demise of Europe’s first farming communities.
The new study analyzed the teeth and bones of 108 individuals from Sweden and Denmark. All remains date between 5,300 and 4,900 years ago.
“Eighteen of these individuals, 17 percent, were infected with the plague when they died,” said lead author Frederik Seersholm. “Moreover, our results suggest that the youngest plague strain we identify may have had epidemic potential.”
The team identified three different strains of the pathogen. The first two were found in a few remains. But the third was more prolific. The researchers believe this is the strain that had such a devastating effect. The fact that one in six people carried the plague suggests that the disease was widespread in Scandinavia at the time.
Better agriculture = more people = spread of diseases
The Neolithic period was marked by an agricultural revolution. Agriculture came to Europe 9,000 years ago and flourished for 5,000 years. These first farmers came originally from the eastern Mediterranean and had quite advanced farming techniques, settlements and monumental tombs such as Stonehenge.
Then it was as if someone had pressed pause. Over the next few hundred years, settlements were abandoned, ritual burials stopped, and some agricultural knowledge disappeared.
But as agriculture flourished 5,000 years ago, so did communities. Populations grew and people began to live in close proximity. Once a single member contracted the plague, it could theoretically have spread rapidly.
Seersholm acknowledges that this pandemic may have been a contributing factor and that other circumstances may have played a role as well.
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