What an Ancient Sheep Reveals About a Bronze Age Plague

Scientists discovered Yersinia pestis DNA in a 4,000-year-old sheep skeleton from Russia's Southern Ural Mountains, providing the first evidence of Bronze Age plague in livestock. This breakthrough helps explain how an ancient strain of plague spread across Eurasia for 2,000 years before the Black Death, likely through close contact between herding communities and their animals. The finding suggests the plague transmitted through human-livestock interactions rather than fleas, highlighting how human disturbance of natural ecosystems can trigger disease outbreaks.