Russian scientists analyzed the DNA of four members of the Fatyanovo culture, which existed in central Russia during the Bronze Age. The remains belonged to four adult males with a Central European origin typical of this cultural community. The researchers also discovered that these individuals shared a common affinity for the pathogenic bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia and meningitis. The article was published in the journal Stratum Plus.
Until recently, scientists could only learn about ancient human diseases if they left visible traces on bones. But modern methods can sometimes even detect infections that don't show up on bones at all, progressing too quickly. This is particularly true of the plague, which, as has been discovered in recent years, humans encountered more than five thousand years ago. Sometimes ancient remains also contain DNA from other pathogens, such as the hepatitis B virus or the leprosy pathogen.
This time, Asya Engovatova of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, together with colleagues from several Russian scientific organizations, focused on DNA analysis of the remains of four adults excavated at the Volosovo-Danilovsky burial ground in the Yaroslavl region. This site is a very large burial complex dating from the mid-3rd to early 2nd millennium BC, associated with the Fatyanovo archaeological culture of the Bronze Age.
All the remains examined belonged to adult men who lived between 20 and 40 years. For three of them, the scientists obtained radiocarbon dates, indicating that the oldest individual lived around 2500 BC, and the latest, around 2000 BC. The men were apparently not closely related, but they appeared to carry the same Y-chromosomal haplogroup, R1a1, and four different mitochondrial haplogroups: U5a1d2a, H2a2a1e, T1a1, and I1a. Their ancestry was found to be close to the Bell Beaker culture, as well as to a representative of the Pre-Unetice culture and some representatives of the Sintashta culture.
The scientists then analyzed the DNA of bacteria and viruses preserved in the remains of these four men. It turned out that all samples contained genetic material from the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause a number of serious illnesses, including pneumonia and meningitis. An earlier case of this bacterium being identified in ancient finds comes from Denmark, where scientists discovered chewed birch tar, approximately 5,700 years old. It preserved not only the DNA of a dark-skinned, blue-eyed woman but also the genetic material of microbes, including streptococci and the Epstein-Barr virus.
Researchers recently discovered Yersinia plague DNA in the remains of an ancient sheep discovered during excavations at the famous Arkaim site of the Sintashta archaeological culture. The bacteria's genetic material was preserved in a bone dating back almost four thousand years.
