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Ancient plague mystery cracked after DNA found in 4,000-year-old animal remains

Published

3 months ago

December 20, 2025

Ancient plague mystery cracked after DNA found in 4,000-year-old animal remains

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Long before the Black Death killed millions across Europe in the Middle Ages, an earlier, more elusive version of the plague spread across much of Eurasia.

For years, scientists were unsure how the ancient disease managed to spread so widely during the Bronze Age, which lasted from roughly 3300 to 1200 B.C., and stick around for nearly 2,000 years, especially since it wasn’t spread by fleas like later plagues. Now, researchers say a surprising clue may help explain it, a domesticated sheep that lived more than 4,000 years ago.

Researchers found DNA from the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis in the tooth of a Bronze Age sheep discovered in what is now southern Russia, according to a study recently published in the journal Cell. It is the first known evidence that the ancient plague infected animals, not just people, and offers a missing clue about how the disease spread.

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“It was alarm bells for my team,” study co-author Taylor Hermes, a University of Arkansas archaeologist who studies ancient livestock and disease spread, said in a statement. “This was the first time we had recovered the genome from Yersinia pestis in a non-human sample.”

A domesticated sheep, likely similar to this one, lived alongside humans during the Bronze Age. (iStock)

And it was a lucky discovery, according to the researchers.

“When we test livestock DNA in ancient samples, we get a complex genetic soup of contamination,” Hermes said. “This is a large barrier … but it also gives us an opportunity to look for pathogens that infected herds and their handlers.”

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The highly technical and time-consuming work requires researchers to separate tiny, damaged fragments of ancient DNA from contamination left by soil, microbes and even modern humans. The DNA they recover from ancient animals is often broken into tiny pieces sometimes just 50 “letters” long, compared to a full human DNA strand, which contains more than 3 billion of those letters.

Animal remains are especially tough to study because they are often poorly preserved compared to human remains that were carefully buried, the researchers noted.

The finding sheds light on how the plague likely spread through close contact between people, livestock and wild animals as Bronze Age societies began keeping larger herds and traveling farther with horses. The Bronze Age saw more widespread use of bronze tools, large-scale animal herding and increased travel, conditions that may have made it easier for diseases to move between animals and humans.

When the plague returned in the Middle Ages during the 1300s, known as the Black Death, it killed an estimated one-third of Europe’s population.

The discovery was made at Arkaim, a fortified Bronze Age settlement in the Southern Ural Mountains of present-day Russia near the Kazakhstan border. (iStock)

“It had to be more than people moving,” Hermes said. “Our plague sheep gave us a breakthrough. We now see it as a dynamic between people, livestock and some still unidentified ‘natural reservoir’ for it.”

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Researchers believe sheep likely picked up the bacteria from another animal, like rodents or migratory birds, that carried it without getting sick and then passed it to humans. They say the findings highlight how many deadly diseases begin in animals and jump to humans, a risk that continues today as people move into new environments and interact more closely with wildlife and livestock.

“It’s important to have a greater respect for the forces of nature,” Hermes said.

The study is based on a single ancient sheep genome, which limits how much scientists can conclude, they noted, and more samples are needed to fully understand the spread.

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The researchers plan to study more ancient human and animal remains from the region to determine how widespread the plague was and which species may have played a role in spreading it.

Researchers (not pictured) found plague-causing Yersinia pestis DNA in the remains of a Bronze Age sheep. (iStock)

They also hope to identify the wild animal that originally carried the bacteria and better understand how human movement and livestock herding helped the disease travel across vast distances, insights that could help them better anticipate how animal-borne diseases continue to emerge.

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The research was led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, with senior authors Felix M. Key of the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology and Christina Warinner of Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology.

The research was supported by the Max Planck Society, which has also funded follow-up work in the region.

Deirdre Bardolf is a lifestyle writer with Fox News Digital.

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Health

Alarming report reveals what’s driving deadly cancer surge in young adults

Published

4 hours ago

March 6, 2026

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Alarming report reveals what’s driving deadly cancer surge in young adults

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On the lookout

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Weight-loss drugs may prevent deadly heart complications by opening blocked blood vessels after heart attacks, groundbreaking new research reveals. (iStock)

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Stat of the week

More than 59% of women are predicted to have high blood pressure by 2050.

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This article was written by Fox News staff.

Health

176 Lbs—Gone! Why One Woman’s Gentle Weight-Loss Tips Really Work

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15 hours ago

March 6, 2026

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176 Lbs—Gone! Why One Woman’s Gentle Weight-Loss Tips Really Work

Cheri’s Gentle Weight-Loss Approach Helped Her Lose Big | Woman’s World

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Health

Brain aging may accelerate after cancer treatment, study suggests

Published

16 hours ago

March 6, 2026

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Brain aging may accelerate after cancer treatment, study suggests

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Surviving cancer as a child or young adult may have a lasting impact on aging, new research suggests.

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center looked at whether life-saving treatments, like chemotherapy and radiation, could speed up biological aging.

They also aimed to determine whether this age acceleration was linked to cognitive issues related to memory, focus and learning.

The team analyzed blood samples from a group of 1,400 long-term survivors treated at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, using epigenetic clocks — tools that estimate biological age by examining chemical tags on DNA.

Biological age is determined based on damage the cells accumulate over time, versus chronological age, which is measured by how long someone has been alive, according to scientists.

Biological age is determined based on the damage cells accumulate over time, according to scientists. (iStock)

“These well-established aging-related biomarkers have previously been associated with neurocognitive impairment and decline in older non-cancer populations, particularly in cognitive domains related to aging and dementia, such as memory, attention and executive function,” the study stated.

Most of the group consisted of acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors, or Hodgkin lymphoma survivors. Participants were at least five years past their treatment, though some had survived for several decades.

They underwent neurocognitive testing to measure their attention span, memory and information processing speed.

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Chemotherapy was found to have the greatest impact on aging acceleration. The study suggests the treatment can alter DNA structure and cause cellular damage.

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“It’s no surprise to find out that young people with cancer who have chemo early in life are affected in terms of long-term aging,” Dr. Marc Siegel, senior medical analyst for Fox News, told Fox News Digital.

Participants underwent neurocognitive testing to measure their attention span, memory and speed of information processing. (iStock)

Researchers also found that cellular aging was closely linked to cognitive performance, as survivors of a higher biological age had more difficulty with memory and attention.

“Chemo poisons and damages cellular function — hopefully the cancer cells more than normal cells, but there is a significant impact on normal cells as well,” said Siegel, who was not involved in the study.

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“There is also something called ‘chemo brain,’ which causes at least temporary difficulty with memory, concentration, word finding and brain fog,” the doctor added.

The research team hopes to use these findings to focus on intervention efforts, specifically by determining when accelerated aging begins.

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“Young cancer survivors have many more decades of life to live,” lead study author AnnaLynn Williams, PhD, said in a press release. “If these accelerated aging changes are occurring early on and setting them on a different trajectory, the goal is to intervene to not only increase their lifespan, but improve their quality of life.”

The team hopes this research will help in the development of early intervention tools that aim to prevent cognitive decline. (iStock)

There were some limitations to the study. The researchers could not adjust for chronic health conditions or education because they are directly impacted by treatment.

Additionally, the study only looked at the survivors at a single point of time, so it could not directly prove causation.

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The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers for comment.

Khloe Quill is a lifestyle production assistant with Fox News Digital. She and the lifestyle team cover a range of story topics including food and drink, travel, and health.