Chapter 2 of Pathogenesis — Jonathan Kennedy 20241 concerns Paleolithic Plagues, in part how Western Hunter Gatherers were replaced by Neolithic European Farmers about 5000 years ago.
Could diseases have helped a relatively small community of shepherds to replace a well-established farming society in northern Europe in the first half of the fifth millennium BCE? Although we don’t yet have a smoking gun, there is strong circumstantial evidence that indicates this might have been the case…
It is highly likely that the sharp fall in the population that occurred in Britain and the rest of western Europe about 5,000 years ago was caused by a “Neolithic Black Death.” But this devastating epidemic differed from the fourteenth-century Black Death in one crucial respect. Yersinia pestis did not evolve into a flea-borne bubonic plague until the beginning of the first millennium BCE…
Could the plague have been the cause of the population crash between 5,500 and 5,000 years ago? Did Yersinia pestis contribute to the decline of the first farming people who built Stonehenge?
One supposition in the book is that unable to jump from rats via fleas, it was spread human to human by coughing/sneezing.
Now there is proof of sheep hosting the Late Neolithic Bronze Age (LNBA) plague.
https://archaeologymag.com/2025/12/a-4000-year-old-sheep-bronze-age-plague/
An international team of researchers has found the DNA of Y. pestis in a 4,000-year-old domesticated sheep from the fortified Bronze Age settlement of Arkaim, in the southern Ural Mountains in present-day Russia, which marks the first confirmed case of a Bronze Age plague infection in a non-human host. It proves that livestock played a role in prehistoric plague dynamics.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00851-7
Although the reservoir or directionality of the infections is unknown, the identification of Y. pestis in an ancient domesticate suggests that sheep husbandry elevated the possibilities for transmission to and from humans.
1If you are currently living through a pandemic, this book is relevant and fascinating.
#bookstodon #pandemic #paleolithic #plague
Ancient Origins
Fish
Marcial Tenreiro-Bermudez
