Plague outbreak in Siberia 5,500 years ago identified through ancient DNA

Research conducted by a team from the University of Oxford has revealed that a plague outbreak occurred among hunter-gatherer groups in southeastern Siberia approximately 5,500 years ago. The team sequenced DNA from the bacteria Yersinia pestis found in the teeth of plague victims from four ancient cemeteries near Lake Baikal, marking this as the earliest known plague outbreak and identifying the oldest strain of Y. pestis ever sequenced. This finding challenges previous theories about the origins of the plague, which suggested that earlier strains lacked lethal genetic traits and that the disease emerged with the rise of farming and urbanization.