DNA Unlocks Key To Athens' Downfall.

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  • Source:
    Current Science. 3/17/2006, Vol. 91 Issue 13, p15-15. 1/2p.
  • Additional Information
    • Subject Terms:
      PLAGUE; INFECTIOUS disease transmission; ANCIENT history; SALMONELLA typhi
    • Subject Terms:
      ATHENS (Greece); GREECEReport Available
    • Abstract:
      The article reports that doctors and historians are puzzled over the identity of the plague that ravaged ancient Athens, Greece. The city of Athens was at the zenith of its power in the fifth century B.C.E., but its glory succumbed to a virulent sickness. In the mid-1990s, construction workers building a subway near an Athens cemetery discovered a mass grave from the fifth century B.C.E. A subsequent analysis of the skeletons' teeth has revealed that they contain DNA matching that of Salmonella typhi, the bacterium that causes typhoid fever.