{"id":3038,"date":"2024-07-30T11:32:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T09:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/?p=3038"},"modified":"2025-09-11T11:39:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T09:39:13","slug":"repeated-plague-infections-across-six-generations-of-neolithic-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/2024\/07\/30\/repeated-plague-infections-across-six-generations-of-neolithic-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Repeated plague infections across six generations of Neolithic Farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Magdalena, Mattias and Helena are contributors to the paper: Seersholm, F. V., Sj\u00f6gren, K. G., Koelman, J., Blank, M., Svensson, E. M., Staring, J., &#8230; &amp; Sikora, M. (2024). Repeated plague infections across six generations of Neolithic Farmers.\u00a0<em>Nature<\/em>,\u00a0<em>632<\/em>(8023), 114-121. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.springernature.com\/full\/springer-static\/image\/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-024-07651-2\/MediaObjects\/41586_2024_7651_Fig1_HTML.png?as=webp\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Fig. 1: Overview of sample locations. Each individual is represented by coloured shapes, with squares and circles representing males and females, respectively, and triangles representing sex unknown. Colours indicate genetic ancestry and black crosses designate plague-positive individuals. Scale bar, 5\u2009km.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-07651-2#Fig1\"><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"Abs1\">Abstract<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>In the period between 5,300 and 4,900\u2009calibrated&nbsp;years before present (cal.&nbsp;bp), populations across large parts of Europe underwent a period of demographic decline<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-07651-2#ref-CR1\">1<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-07651-2#ref-CR2\">2<\/a><\/sup>. However, the cause of this so-called Neolithic decline is still debated. Some argue for an agricultural crisis resulting in the decline<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-07651-2#ref-CR3\">3<\/a><\/sup>, others for the spread of an early form of plague<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-07651-2#ref-CR4\">4<\/a><\/sup>. Here we use population-scale ancient genomics to infer ancestry, social structure and pathogen infection in 108\u2009Scandinavian Neolithic individuals from eight megalithic graves and a stone cist. We find that the Neolithic plague was widespread, detected in at least 17% of the sampled population and across large geographical distances. We demonstrate that the disease spread within the Neolithic community in three distinct infection events within a period of around 120\u2009years. Variant graph-based pan-genomics shows that the Neolithic plague genomes retained ancestral genomic variation present in&nbsp;<em>Yersinia pseudotuberculosis<\/em>, including virulence factors associated with disease outcomes. In addition, we reconstruct four multigeneration pedigrees, the largest of which consists of 38\u2009individuals spanning six generations, showing a patrilineal social organization. Lastly, we document direct genomic evidence for Neolithic female exogamy in a woman buried in a different megalithic tomb than her brothers. Taken together, our findings provide a detailed reconstruction of plague spread within a large patrilineal kinship group and identify multiple plague infections in a population dated to the beginning of the Neolithic decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Magdalena, Mattias and Helena are contributors to the paper: Seersholm, F. V., Sj\u00f6gren, K. G., Koelman, J., Blank, M., Svensson, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,11],"tags":[127,191,41,190],"class_list":["post-3038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications","category-research","tag-europe","tag-farmers","tag-neolithic","tag-plague"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3039,"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3038\/revisions\/3039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jakobssonlab.iob.uu.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}