The Black Plague Swept Northern Europe Ca. 3400 BCE

We've been aware of the population collapse that hit Northern Europe around 5400 years ago (around 3400 BCE) for a long time, for example, in the article below from 2013. 

But new evidence points to the black plague as a major contributing cause. Climate and exhaustion of soils with primitive Neolithic agricultural methods have also been suggested as causes. Of course, causes can interact and aren't mutually exclusive. For example, people can be much more vulnerable to pandemics during period of famine caused by poor agricultural practices and climate events.

Following its initial arrival in SE Europe 8,500 years ago agriculture spread throughout the continent, changing food production and consumption patterns and increasing population densities. 

Here we show that, in contrast to the steady population growth usually assumed, the introduction of agriculture into Europe was followed by a boom-and-bust pattern in the density of regional populations. We demonstrate that summed calibrated radiocarbon date distributions and simulation can be used to test the significance of these demographic booms and busts in the context of uncertainty in the radiocarbon date calibration curve and archaeological sampling. 

We report these results for Central and Northwest Europe between 8,000 and 4,000 cal. BP and investigate the relationship between these patterns and climate. However, we find no evidence to support a relationship. Our results thus suggest that the demographic patterns may have arisen from endogenous causes, although this remains speculative.

Stephen Shennan, "Regional population collapse followed initial agriculture booms in mid-Holocene Europe" 4 Nature Communications 2486 (October 1, 2013).

The new paper is:

In the period between 5,300 and 4,900 calibrated years before present (cal. BP), populations across large parts of Europe underwent a period of demographic decline. However, the cause of this so-called Neolithic decline is still debated. Some argue for an agricultural crisis resulting in the decline, others for the spread of an early form of plague. 

Here we use population-scale ancient genomics to infer ancestry, social structure and pathogen infection in 108 Scandinavian 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 years. 

Variant graph-based pan-genomics shows that the Neolithic plague genomes retained ancestral genomic variation present in Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, including virulence factors associated with disease outcomes. 

In addition, we reconstruct four multigeneration pedigrees, the largest of which consists of 38 individuals 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.

Frederik Valeur Seersholm, "Repeated plague infections across six generations of Neolithic Farmers" Nature (July 10, 2024).

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