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DNA Confirms Cause of 1665 London's Great Plague (bbc.com)
Slashdot reader JThaddeus writes: The BBC reports that a 17th-century mass grave uncovered in London confirms the identity of the bacteria responsible for the Great Plague of 1665-1666. "Testing in Germany confirmed the presence of DNA from the Yersinia pestis bacterium -- the agent that causes bubonic plague -- rather than another pathogen." The grave contains approximately 3,500 skeletons... Teeth were removed from some of the skulls, and their pulp tested at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Positive results were found in 5 of 20 individuals tested.
"To reassure anyone worried whether plague bacterium was released from the excavation work or scientific analysis, it doesn't survive in the ground," reports the BBC. The 3,500 graves represent roughly 3.5% of London's 100,000 victims of the Great Plague -- one-quarter of the city's entire population.
"To reassure anyone worried whether plague bacterium was released from the excavation work or scientific analysis, it doesn't survive in the ground," reports the BBC. The 3,500 graves represent roughly 3.5% of London's 100,000 victims of the Great Plague -- one-quarter of the city's entire population.
The thing to reassure people of is the fact the bubonic plague is treatable now unlike back then not that it can't live in the ground as that is a fairly pointless reassurance as the bacteria is still very much alive and well in the world. It still occasionally raises its head with outbreaks and results in 100+ deaths a year.
What's this obsession with old bones?
The people are gone. Those who mourned them are gone. Burn the remains and let vegetation reclaim the minerals.
Prairie dogs didn't carry plague until ranchers started using it to kill prairie dogs. So kind of poetic justice that they give it right back.