Around Lake Baikal, in southern Siberia and north of present-day Mongolia, nomadic human groups who lived five millennia ago relied on fishing, hunting, and gathering wild fruits. They were still in the Paleolithic; they had not been exposed to agriculture or the sedentarization that produced the first cities, which spread from the Middle East to Europe. Yet that Eden was thought to be free of two of the burdens that accompanied early human settlements: violence and disease. Perhaps the former; but now we know it was not the case of the latter. Researchers who study ancient pathogens have found in that region the oldest outbreak of plague, a scourge that has haunted humans ever since. As they detail in the prestigious journal Nature, the bacterium that caused it lacked the genes that later gave it enormous virulence, but it was nevertheless capable of killing, especially children.

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En torno al lago Baikal, en el sur de Siberia y al norte de la actual Mongolia, vivían hace cinco milenios grupos humanos nómadas dedicados a la pesca, la caza y la recolección de frutos silvestres. Aún estaban en el Paleolítico; no conocían ni la agricultura ni la sedentarización de las primeras ciudades que, desde Oriente Medio, pasaron a Europa. Pero se suponía que en aquel Edén también estaban libres de dos de los lastres que acompañaron a las primeras aglomeraciones humanas: la violencia y la enfermedad. De la primera, quizá; pero de la segunda, ahora sabemos que no. Investigadores de patógenos del pasado han encontrado allí el brote más antiguo de la peste, una plaga que ha perseguido a los humanos desde entonces. Según detallan en la prestigiosa revista Nature, a la bacteria causante le faltaban los genes que le dieron enorme virulencia más tarde, pero le bastaba para matar, sobre todo a los niños.

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Recovered from the ice of an Alpine glacier at the end of the last century, almost everything about Ötzi was already known. That he was about 45 when he was killed from behind some 5,300 years ago. A detailed genetic study published three years ago revealed that, besides being bald, he had a dark complexion and likely came from distant Anatolia. We even know what he ate shortly before he was killed by an arrow. Now, a new study identifies the microscopic life he carried inside him. The paper, published in the journal Microbiome, shows that his bacteria were very different from those of people in modern societies. The researchers also found a number of cold-adapted fungi that have awakened thousands of years later and could threaten the mummy’s future.

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