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Image Credit: Sun et al., Nature Communications (2026)
Ancient DNA Reveals Plague Spread Across Eurasia 5,300 Years Ago
A newly identified prehistoric genome of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, provides the earliest known genetic evidence of the disease in East Asia and suggests that plague lineages spread rapidly across Eurasia around 5,300 years ago.
The genome was recovered from an individual buried at the Middle Neolithic cemetery of Zhengjiagou in northern China, dated to approximately 5,465–5,074 years before present. Researchers also identified two plague genomes from Early Bronze Age burials in the Minusinsk Basin of southern Siberia, dated to around 4,500–4,200 years ago.
The discoveries followed the screening of 1,400 ancient human remains from eastern Eurasia. Genetic comparisons with previously published plague genomes revealed a major early diversification event connecting closely related strains found in northern China, Germany and southern Scandinavia.
According to the study, these strains separated within a period of roughly 200 years despite being distributed across more than 7,500 kilometres. The estimated minimum dispersal rate was approximately 32.9 kilometres per year, considerably faster than the continuous movement normally associated with rodent hosts. This pattern is consistent with long-distance movement involving human communities, trade networks or repeated transfers between connected groups, although the precise transmission mechanism remains uncertain.
The genetic evidence also sheds light on the early evolution of plague. The Chinese and Siberian strains lacked the ymt gene, which later became important in efficient flea-borne transmission. A subsequent lineage acquired this gene alongside several gene-disrupting mutations and other genomic changes. According to the researchers, many of these alterations accumulated within a period of roughly eight centuries, marking an important evolutionary stage in the emergence of later flea-adapted plague lineages.
The study also identified an approximately 3,000-year period during which the lineage ancestral to later plague forms appears to have diversified but is only rarely detected in ancient human remains. This gap may reflect the uneven preservation and recovery of ancient pathogen DNA, as archaeological studies rely heavily on human skeletal material. It may also indicate that some plague lineages circulated mainly among animals or within localized environments, with only occasional transmission to human communities. The authors therefore caution that the limited number of identified human infections does not necessarily represent the true prevalence or geographic distribution of the disease during this period.
The findings extend the prehistoric record of plague into East Asia and indicate that the pathogen had already achieved a continent-wide distribution thousands of years before the historically documented pandemics. However, evidence from East Asia remains limited, and additional ancient genomes will be needed to clarify the routes, hosts and transmission mechanisms involved in this early expansion.
Published on: 24-07-2026
Edited by: Abdulmnam Samakie
Source: Nature Communications
