PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Aida Andrades Valtueña AU - Alissa Mittnik AU - Ken Massy AU - Raili Allmäe AU - Mantas Daubaras AU - Rimantas Jankauskas AU - Mari Tõrv AU - Saskia Pfrengle AU - Maria A. Spyrou AU - Michal Feldman AU - Wolfgang Haak AU - Kirsten I. Bos AU - Philipp W. Stockhammer AU - Alexander Herbig AU - Johannes Krause TI - The Stone Age Plague: 1000 years of Persistence in Eurasia AID - 10.1101/094243 DP - 2016 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 094243 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/19/094243.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/19/094243.full AB - Molecular signatures of Yersinia pestis were recently identified in prehistoric Eurasian individuals, thus suggesting Y. pestis might have caused some form of plague in humans prior to the first historically documented pandemic. Here, we present four new Y. pestis genomes from the European Late Neolithic and Bronze Age (LNBA) dating from 4,500 to 3,700 BP. We show that all currently investigated LNBA strains form a single genetic clade in the Y. pestis phylogeny that appears to be extinct today. Interpreting our data within the context of recent ancient human genomic evidence, which suggests an increase in human mobility during the LNBA, we propose a possible scenario for the spread of Y. pestis during the LNBA: Y. pestis may have entered Europe from Central Eurasia during an expansion of steppe pastoralists, possibly persisted within Europe until the mid Bronze Age, and moved back towards Central Eurasia in subsequent human population movements.