Resurgence of measles is a tale as old as human history
By Nancy Shute
Late last year, researchers reported a discovery from a 5,000-year-old mass grave in Sweden: DNA from the bacterium that causes plague. The people in that grave were probably felled by an epidemic that spread via trade routes from southeastern Europe and contributed to sharp population declines across the continent (SN: 1/19/19, p. 12), a precursor to the Black Death that wiped out up to half of Europe’s population in the 14th century.
Infectious microbes come and they conquer: It’s a story repeated again and again throughout human history. And we humans are often unwitting agents of our doom, spreading pathogens as we travel. That was true for Old World ills like smallpox and measles that traveled with Christopher Columbus and his crew to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and devastated the indigenous Taino people. It was also true for the Spanish flu of 1918–1919 that killed about 50 million people worldwide and was spread by troop movements in World War I.