Marmots, not rats, spread ancient plague - study

The plague was causing deadly outbreaks among communities of hunter-gatherers in Siberia around 5 500 years ago, according to a study this week that sheds light on how humans could have first caught this scourge.

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The plague is generally associated with rats spreading the disease through crowded medieval cities, sparking pandemics such as the Black Death that killed tens of millions of people across Europe from the 1300s to 1800s.

This was a long way from the rugged vistas surrounding Lake Baikal in the Russian region of Siberia, where archaeologists have studied the burial sites of prehistoric hunter-gatherers.

One of these sites has been particularly mystifying because of its “very unusual mortality profile” - many children and adolescents appear to have died over a short period, said Oxford University researcher Ruairidh Macleod.