Yersinia pestis genomes reveal plague in Britain 4000 years ago

Pooja Swali (), Rick Schulting, Alexandre Gilardet, Monica Kelly, Kyriaki Anastasiadou, Isabelle Glocke, Jesse McCabe, Mia Williams, Tony Audsley, Louise Loe, Teresa Fernández-Crespo, Javier Ordoño, David Walker, Tom Clare, Geoff Cook, Ian Hodkinson, Mark Simpson, Stephen Read, Tom Davy, Marina Silva, Mateja Hajdinjak, Anders Bergström, Thomas Booth () and Pontus Skoglund ()
Additional contact information
Pooja Swali: Francis Crick Institute
Rick Schulting: University of Oxford
Alexandre Gilardet: Francis Crick Institute
Monica Kelly: Francis Crick Institute
Kyriaki Anastasiadou: Francis Crick Institute
Isabelle Glocke: Francis Crick Institute
Jesse McCabe: Francis Crick Institute
Mia Williams: Francis Crick Institute
Tony Audsley: Independent Scholar
Louise Loe: Oxford Archaeology
Teresa Fernández-Crespo: University of Oxford
Javier Ordoño: Department of Archaeology and New Technologies
David Walker: Wells & Mendip Museum
Tom Clare: Levens Local History Group
Geoff Cook: Levens Local History Group
Ian Hodkinson: Liverpool John Moores University
Mark Simpson: Levens Local History Group
Stephen Read: Levens Local History Group
Tom Davy: Francis Crick Institute
Marina Silva: Francis Crick Institute
Mateja Hajdinjak: Francis Crick Institute
Anders Bergström: Francis Crick Institute
Thomas Booth: Francis Crick Institute
Pontus Skoglund: Francis Crick Institute

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Extinct lineages of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of the plague, have been identified in several individuals from Eurasia between 5000 and 2500 years before present (BP). One of these, termed the ‘LNBA lineage’ (Late Neolithic and Bronze Age), has been suggested to have spread into Europe with human groups expanding from the Eurasian steppe. Here, we show that the LNBA plague was spread to Europe’s northwestern periphery by sequencing three Yersinia pestis genomes from Britain, all dating to ~4000 cal BP. Two individuals were from an unusual mass burial context in Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, and one individual was from a single burial under a ring cairn monument in Levens, Cumbria. To our knowledge, this represents the earliest evidence of LNBA plague in Britain documented to date. All three British Yersinia pestis genomes belong to a sublineage previously observed in Bronze Age individuals from Central Europe that had lost the putative virulence factor yapC. This sublineage is later found in Eastern Asia ~3200 cal BP. While the severity of the disease is currently unclear, the wide geographic distribution within a few centuries suggests substantial transmissibility.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38393-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-38393-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38393-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().