is Hardly a Virus for humans, more deadly than the prior 40 years, eradicated smallpox virus. Alone in the 20. Century will still be up to a half a billion people in the infectious disease died. Even if the science is assumed, the smallpox been around for Thousands of years – among other things, one of the ten biblical Plagues of the Old Testament, are associated with the leaves of the diseases listed in the connection, had the Virus been genetically only about 360 years ago. Scientists from the Charité in Berlin and the universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen, it is now possible, the smallpox virus in the skeletons from the Viking age, around 1400 years to prove it. Thus, the Thesis is disproved, the smallpox had only been in the middle ages by returning crusaders to Central and Northern Europe brought. Instead, the Virus circulated already at the latest since the end of the Viking age widely in Europe, such as the bioinformatics scientist Terry Jones from the Institute of Virology Campus Charité hospital reported on Wednesday.
Peter-Philipp Schmitt
editor in the Department “Germany and the world”.
F. A. Z.
For their analysis, the researchers examined not only the skeletons from the Viking time, but also the mortal Remains of much older people. Overall, the genome of 1867 skeletons was the scientists that were between 150 and 31.630 years old and from the European-Asian and American traditional. In 13 cases, out of teeth, or a part of the temporal bone of the deceased DNA fragments of the human smallpox virus to enrich. Eleven of the people lived, therefore, between 600 and 1050 after Christ, their mortal Remains were in Viking burial sites in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia and England have been found.
