Barbara Bramanti

Abstract The emergence of new political and social structures in Western and Central Europe during the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages has long been attributed to large-scale migrations. Yet emerging evidence increasingly emphasizes the role of small-group mobility in reshaping the Roman world1,2,3. Here we present 258 ancient genomes from the former Roman frontier of southern Germany, which we analyse alongside 2,500 ancient and 379 modern genomes.

New Results Barbara Bramanti, Yarong Wu, Ruifu Yang, Yujun Cui, View ORCID ProfileNils Christian Stenseth doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.20.440561 Abstract The Second Plague Pandemic started in Europe with the Black Death in 1346 and lasted until the 19th century. Based on ancient DNA studies, there is a scientific disagreement over whether the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, came into Europe once (Hypothesis 1), or repeatedly over the following four centuries (Hypothesis 2).

1. Introduction Ancient DNA studies have identified Yersinia pestis, the aetiological agent of the Third Pandemic, as the cause of the previous plague pandemics: the First Pandemic (sixth to eighth centuries) [1–3] and the Second Pandemic (fourteen to nineteenth centuries) [4–8]. During all three pandemics, distinct strains of Y. pestis were introduced to Europe causing epidemics of plague, including the infamous Black Death (1346–1353); the strains from the first two pandemics are now extinct.