Plague Helped Bring Down Roman Empire, Graveyard Suggests

[struggle4progress]

Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor
Date: 10 May 2013 Time: 07:26 AM ET

... The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, has been linked with at least two of the most devastating pandemics in recorded history ... Although past studies confirmed this germ was linked with both of these catastrophes, much controversy existed as to whether it also caused the Justinianic Plague of the sixth to eighth centuries ... To help solve this mystery, scientists investigated ancient DNA from the teeth of 19 different sixth-century skeletons from a medieval graveyard in Bavaria ... They unambiguously found the plague bacterium Y. pestis there ...

http://www.livescience.com/29498-plague-helped-destroy-roman-empire.html