Human remains of a 30-40 year old women who lived some 5000 years ago. Credit: Karl-Göran Sjögren/University of Gothenburg
ARCHAEOLOGY
New research: Plague repeatedly struck Stone Age communities in Sweden
DNA-analysis of unusually well preserved human remains from 5000 ago show that the plague was much more common than previously thought.
This is believed to be an important piece in the jigsaw to explain why there was a significant drop in the early Scandinavian farming population, sometimes described as the ”neolithic decline”,
”The big surprise is (that) this was very common in this population. Something like 17 percent of the individuals have been affected by plague,” says archeologist Karl-Göran Sjögren.
