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Child Graves Near Lake Baikal Reveal Plague’s Deadly Reach 5,500 Years Ago
A prehistoric Lake Baikal plague outbreak is no longer just a theory drawn from scattered graves. Ancient DNA from children buried near the Angara River in southeastern Siberia shows that Yersinia pestis was killing hunter-gatherer communities around 5,500 years ago, long before the Black Death or the first cities usually linked to epidemic disease. Three…