Yersinia pestis genomes reveal plague in Britain 4000 years ago

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 14; no. 1; p. 2930
• Main Authors: Swali, Pooja, Schulting, Rick, Gilardet, Alexandre, Kelly, Monica, Anastasiadou, Kyriaki, Glocke, Isabelle, McCabe, Jesse, Williams, Mia, Audsley, Tony, Loe, Louise, Fernández-Crespo, Teresa, Ordoño, Javier, Walker, David, Clare, Tom, Cook, Geoff, Hodkinson, Ian, Simpson, Mark, Read, Stephen, Davy, Tom, Silva, Marina, Hajdinjak, Mateja, Bergström, Anders, Booth, Thomas, Skoglund, Pontus
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 30.05.2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 45/23; 631/181/27; 692/699/255/1318; Asia, Eastern; Bronze Age; Europe; Genomes; Geographical distribution; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; multidisciplinary; Neolithic; Plague; Plague - epidemiology; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Steppes; Stone Age; United Kingdom - epidemiology; Virulence factors; Yersinia pestis; Yersinia pestis - genetics; Asia, Eastern; United Kingdom; Europe; United Kingdom > UK; Asia; Central Europe
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38393-w

Extinct lineages of Yersinia pestis , the causative agent of the plague, have been identified in several individuals from Eurasia between 5000 and 2500 years before present (BP). One of these, termed the ‘LNBA lineage’ (Late Neolithic and Bronze Age), has been suggested to have spread into Europe with human groups expanding from the Eurasian steppe. Here, we show that the LNBA plague was spread to Europe’s northwestern periphery by sequencing three Yersinia pestis genomes from Britain, all dating to ~4000 cal BP. Two individuals were from an unusual mass burial context in Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, and one individual was from a single burial under a ring cairn monument in Levens, Cumbria. To our knowledge, this represents the earliest evidence of LNBA plague in Britain documented to date. All three British Yersinia pestis genomes belong to a sublineage previously observed in Bronze Age individuals from Central Europe that had lost the putative virulence factor yapC . This sublineage is later found in Eastern Asia ~3200 cal BP. While the severity of the disease is currently unclear, the wide geographic distribution within a few centuries suggests substantial transmissibility. An extinct prehistoric plague lineage of Yersinia pestis has been documented from Central Europe to Asia during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age. Here, Swali et al. show that this lineage spread to Europe’s northwestern periphery by sequencing three ~4000 year-old Yersinia pestis genomes from Britain.