Plague Predates Agriculture: Ancient DNA Rewrites Disease History

A recently discovered plague outbreak among hunter-gatherers in Siberia challenges long-held scientific assumptions about when and how epidemic diseases emerged in human populations. DNA analysis from ancient burial sites reveals that Yersinia pestis infected mobile communities 5,500 years ago, centuries before settled agricultural societies—contradicting the theory that epidemics require densely populated permanent settlements. This finding fundamentally reshapes our understanding of disease evolution and suggests that hunter-gatherer populations were far more vulnerable to infectious disease than previously thought.