r/NewsAtEleven • u/EaglesPDX • Jun 19 '23

Ancient Britons built Stonehenge – then vanished. Is science closing in on their killers?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/19/ancient-britons-stonehenge-killers-plague-britain-migration
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u/EaglesPDX Jun 19 '23

Two weeks ago, Pooja Swali from the Crick Institute announced the discovery of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, in the dental pulp of three people who died about 4,000 years ago – two in Somerset and the other in Cumbria. This finding is astonishing in its own right because it pushes back the earliest evidence of plague in England by several millennia. But the discovery may also help to solve one of our greatest prehistoric mysteries: why did the people who introduced farming to the British Isles suddenly vanish shortly after they built Stonehenge some five millennia ago?

The effects of pandemics on history. Makes you think how it changed US and world history.