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>About 20% of the bodies of people who lived in the Bronze Age found in the Eurasian Steppe region were infected with the bacteria. Although livestock farming indicates what caused the transmission of the disease during this period, it is only one piece of the puzzle and opens the door for further analyses of the evolution of Y. pestis
>According to Taylor Hermes, co-author of the study and a professor at the University of Arkansas in the US, it is likely that humans and animals transmitted the bacteria to each other, but it is unclear how they did this or how the sheep became infected in the first place
>One hypothesis is that the disease spread to a flock through a food or water source and then to humans through the consumption of contaminated meat from these animals
>In addition to helping scientists understand how the bacteria evolved, finding the pathogen's genome in an animal that lived four thousand years ago could also help in understanding modern diseases. “Evolution can sometimes be lazy. […] The genetic tools that helped Y. pestis thrive for more than 2,000 years across Eurasia can be reused,” Light-Maka said
>Recent evidence suggests that most modern human diseases emerged within the last 10,000 years after animal domestication. The lineage of bacteria that caused plague in Europe and Asia during the Bronze Age spread from the European continent to Mongolia