The plague may have wiped out most northern Europeans 5000 years ago
DNA evidence from tombs in Sweden and Denmark suggests major plague outbreaks were responsible for the Neolithic decline in northern Europe
By Michael Le Page
10 July 2024
The culture that built Stonehenge suffered a mysterious population decline
Wirestock, Inc./Alamy
The Neolithic culture in Europe that produced megastructures such as Stonehenge went into a major decline around 5400 years ago. Now we have the best evidence yet that this was due to plague.
Sequencing of ancient DNA from 108 individuals who lived in northern Europe at this time has revealed that the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis was present in 18 of them when they died.
Read more
Amazingly preserved Bronze Age village reveals life in ancient England
Advertisement
“We think that the plague did kill them,” says Frederik Seersholm at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Around 5400 years ago, the population of Europe fell sharply, particularly in northern regions. Why this happened has long been a mystery.
Over the past decade, studies of ancient human DNA have revealed that local populations didn’t fully recover from the Neolithic decline. Instead, they were largely replaced by other people moving in from the Eurasian steppes. In Britain, by around 4000 years ago, for instance, less than 10 per cent of the population was derived from the people who built Stonehenge.
