Findings add to the historical record on the causes of the Plague of Justinian, which killed millions within the Byzantine Empire
“A plague is upon us’’ must have been a common phrase in ancient Jordan, where countless people perished from a mysterious malady that would shape both a society and an era of civilization.
Now, an interdisciplinary team of University of South Florida experts is learning more about the Plague of Justinian and its consequences during that early time. Led by Rays H. Y. Jiang, an associate professor in the College of Public Health, the team recently completed a third in a series of scholarly papers focusing on the first-known outbreak of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean world.
“We wanted to move beyond identifying the pathogen and focus on the people it affected, who they were, how they lived and what pandemic death looked like inside a real city,’’ Jiang said.
During the Plague of Justinian, the people affected lived in diverse and often unconnected communities. But the plague brought them together in death, with countless bodies deposited rapidly atop layers of pottery debris in an abandoned civic space − the focal point of this recent research.
Jiang was principal investigator for the study, with colleagues from USF’s Genomics, Global Health Infectious Disease Research Center and the departments of anthropology, molecular medicine and history. Additional insights came from archaeologist Karen Hendrix at Sydney University Australia and a DNA lab at Florida Atlantic University. While their first two papers focused primarily on Yersinia pestis, a pathogen that causes deadly forms of plague, the new research examined its short and long-term impact on an ancient society – and even what it might mean today.
“The earlier stories identified the plague organism,’’ Jiang said. “The Jerash site turns that genetic signal into a human story about who died and how a city experienced crisis.’’
While historical sources describe widespread plague in the Byzantine world, many proposed mass burials have remained speculative. Jerash is the first site where a plague mass grave has been confirmed both archaeologically and genetically.
The authors describe it as a single mortuary event, fundamentally different from normal civic cemeteries that grow in size over time. At Jerash, hundreds of bodies were deposited within days. This finding changes perceptions about the First Pandemic in two important ways: It provides direct evidence of large-scale human mortality and offers insight into how people moved, lived and became vulnerable within ancient cities.
The mass grave also helps resolve a long-standing puzzle: Why history and genetics show that people moved and mixed over time, while other evidence makes ancient communities appear mostly local. Trade, migration and empires brought people together across the Middle East, yet most burials suggest people grew up where they were buried.
Jerash shows both can be true. Migration often happened gradually over generations and was usually diluted within everyday communities, making it hard to detect in normal cemeteries. During a crisis, however, mobile populations were suddenly concentrated together, allowing long-term patterns of movement to become visible in a single moment.
The evidence suggests that the individuals buried at Jerash were part of a mobile population embedded within the broader urban community of ancient Jordan, normally dispersed across the landscape but brought together in a single mass grave by crisis.
“By linking biological evidence from the bodies to the archaeological setting, we can see how disease affected real people within their social and environmental context,’’ Jiang said. “This helps us understand pandemics in history as lived human health events, not just outbreaks recorded in text.’’
The research team is helping reshape the understanding not only of how pandemics are born and spread, but their impact on human life and civic responses. They thrive through densely populated cities, travel and environmental change, just as pathogens of today.
“Pandemics aren’t just biological events, they’re social events, and this study shows how disease intersects with daily life, movement and vulnerability,’’ Jiang said. “Because pandemics reveal who is vulnerable and why, those patterns still shape how disease affects societies today.’’
A: Location of Pontecagnano (modified from NASA Visible Earth project ‒ credits to Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC). B: Dental sample. C: Histological images of two sampled teeth with matched stress Accentuated Lines. D: Microscopic images of the remains extracted from dental calculus.
Credit: Germano et al., 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Teeth provide a wealth of information about the lives of Iron Age Italians, according to a study published January 14, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Roberto Germano of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy and colleagues.
Comparing the lifestyles of ancient cultures requires detailed information about the lives of long-deceased individuals. Human teeth are an excellent resource for this data, being very resilient structures that act as archives of life history information. In this study, Germano and colleagues combined multiple dental analyses to interpret details about health and diet in the Iron Age Italian site of Pontecagnano, dating to the 7th and 6th centuries BC.
The team analyzed growth patterns in the dental tissue of 30 teeth from 10 individuals. Comparing data from canine and molar teeth, they reconstructed growth history during the first 6 years of individuals’ lives. They observed minor stress events that occurred at about one year and four years of age, most likely related to pivotal periods of early childhood where changing behavior and diet expose children to diseases. Analysis of dental plaque also provided insights into adult diets, revealing the presence of a range of foodstuffs: cereals, legumes, abundant carbohydrates, and fermented foods. These results align with previous research, suggesting an increased diversity of food resources during this time period thanks to increased contact with Mediterranean cultures.
This study provides the first histological data from the Iron Age community of Pontecagnano, and proof of concept that combined dental analyses can provide detailed insights into ancient life histories. Given the small number of individuals analyzed, the results of this study should not be interpreted as representative of the broader population and are better seen as detailed insights into individual life histories. The authors suggest that future study involving larger samples and additional techniques such as isotopic analysis will dramatically improve our understanding of ancient communities.
Roberto Germano adds: “The teeth of Pontecagnano’s Iron Age inhabitants opened a unique window onto their lives: we could follow childhood growth and health with remarkable precision and identify traces of cereals, legumes, and fermented foods in adulthood, revealing how this community adapted to environmental and social challenges.”
Alessia Nava adds: “The study of the histomorphometry of deciduous and permanent teeth from individuals found in ancient necropolises makes it possible to go beyond the narrow focus on the period close to their death and brings to the forefront the life of each of them during their early years. This and other modern approaches represent a major technological and disciplinary advancement that is revolutionizing the study of the biocultural adaptations of past populations.”
Emanuela Cristiani adds: “In the case of Pontecagnano, the analysis of dental calculus revealed starch granules from cereals and legumes, yeast spores, and plant fibers, providing a very concrete picture of the diet and some daily activities of these Iron Age communities, and offering strong evidence of the regular consumption of fermented foods and beverages.”
The hunting of large whales goes back much further in time than previously thought. New research from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of Prehistory of the UAB reveals that Indigenous communities in southern Brazil were hunting large cetaceans 5,000 years ago, around a thousand years before the earliest documented evidence from Arctic and North Pacific societies.
Published in Nature Communications, the study shows that groups in the region of Babitonga Bay (Santa Catarina) who built sambaquis – monumental shell mounds built by Holocene societies along the coast of Brazil – developed specialized technologies for hunting large whales long before earlier archaeological research had suggested. The study redefines the role of South American communities in the emergence of complex maritime culture as, until now, the origins of large-whale hunting were believed to lie among postglacial societies of the Northern Hemisphere between 3,500 and 2,500 years ago.
Led by ICTA-UAB researchers Krista McGrath and André Colonese and conducted with an international team, the study analysed hundreds of cetacean bone remains and bone tools from sambaquis in Babitonga Bay, now housed at the Museu Arqueológico de Sambaqui de Joinville, Brazil. Many of the sites no longer exist, making this collection a unique archive of a history that otherwise could not have been reconstructed.
The team combined zooarchaeology, typological analysis, and cutting-edge molecular techniques (ZooMS) to study the cetacean bones and objects, identifying remains of the southern right whales, humpback whales, blue whales, sei whales, sperm whales, and dolphins, many showing clear cut marks associated with butchering. Large whale-bone harpoons were also documented among the largest found in South America. Their presence, alongside the abundance of whale bones, their inclusion in funerary contexts and the presence of inshore species, provides strong evidence of active hunting rather than opportunistic use of stranded animals.
“The data reveals that these communities had the knowledge, tools, and specialized strategies to hunt large whales thousands of years earlier than we had previously assumed,” says Krista McGrath, lead author of the study.
The results also offer important ecological insights. The abundance of humpback whale remains suggest that their historical distribution extended much further south than the current main breeding areas off the coast of Brazil. “The recent increase in sightings in Southern Brazil may therefore reflect a historical recolonization process, with implications for conservation. Reconstructing whale distributions before the impact of industrial whaling is essential to understanding their recovery dynamics,” says Marta Cremer, co-author of the paper.
Beyond rewriting the origins of early whale hunting, the study sheds new light on the economies, technologies, and lifeways of postglacial societies along the Atlantic coast of South America. According to André Colonese, senior author of the study, “This research opens a new perspective on the social organization of the Sambaqui peoples. It represents a paradigm shift - we can now view these groups not only as shellfish collectors and fishers, but also as whalers.”
Dione Bandeira, a Brazilian archaeologist with more than 20 years of experience working on sambaquis, adds that “the results reveal a practice that made a significant contribution to the long-term and dense presence of these societies along the Brazilian coast.”
The Sambaqui peoples integrated marine resources into their cultural systems and developed a sophisticated maritime culture characterized by specialized technologies, collective cooperation, and ritual practices associated with the capture of large marine animals. This unwritten Indigenous history has survived through museum collections and through the efforts of those working to preserve the sambaqui sites that have escaped the impact of Brazil’s urbanization over the past centuries.
Ana Paula, director of the Museu Arqueológico de Sambaqui de Joinville, notes that “the collections safeguarded at the Sambaqui Archaeological Museum in Joinville, especially the Guilherme Tibúrtius Collection, highlight the richness and vast potential of information on ancestral peoples that can still be explored in depth.”
Precisely dated fossils: A high-resolution magnetostratigraphic record at Thomas Quarry I captures the Matuyama–Brunhes reversal at around 773,000 years ago, providing one of the most accurate ages for an African Pleistocene hominin assemblage.
Near the root of our lineage: Mandibles and other remains show a mosaic of archaic and derived traits consistent with an African sister population to Homo antecessor, near the divergence of Middle Pleistocene Eurasian and African hominin lineages.
Northwestern Africa’s key role: Decades of Moroccan-French research in the Casablanca coastal formations reveal a uniquely preserved cave sequence and carnivore-den context, highlighting the region’s importance in early Homo evolution.
An international research team led by Jean-Jacques Hublin (Collège de France & Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), David Lefèvre (Université de Montpellier Paul Valéry), Giovanni Muttoni (Università degli Studi di Milano) and Abderrahim Mohib (Moroccan Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine, INSAP) reports the analysis of new hominin fossils from the site of Thomas Quarry I (Casablanca, Morocco). The fossils are very securely dated to 773,000 plus/minus 4,000 years ago, thanks to a high-resolution magnetostratigraphic record capturing in detail the Brunhes/Matuyama boundary, the last main geomagnetic polarity reversal and precise temporal markers of the Quaternary. Published in Nature, this work highlights African populations near the base of the lineage that eventually gave rise to Homo sapiens, providing new insights into the shared ancestry of H. sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans.
Decades of Moroccan-French fieldwork lead to major new discoveries
The results presented here stem from over three decades of continuous archaeological and geological research conducted in the framework of the Moroccan-French Program “Préhistoire de Casablanca”. This program conducts extensive excavations, systematic stratigraphic studies, and large-scale geoarchaeological analyses in the southwest part of the city of Casablanca.
This patient and rigorous fieldwork progressively revealed the exceptional stratigraphic, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological setting of Thomas Quarry I, ultimately leading to the discovery of the hominin remains and geological sequences that underpin the present study.
As Abderrahim Mohib explains: “The success of this long-term research reflects a strong institutional collaboration involving theMinistère de la Jeunesse, de la Culture et de la Communication Département de la Culture of the Kingdom of Morocco (through INSAP) and the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères of France (through the French Archaeological Mission Casablanca)”. The present study was also supported by the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy), the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany), the LabEx Archimède – University of Montpellier Paul Valéry, the University of Bordeaux andthe Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (France).
A unique geological setting: the Moroccan Atlantic coast as a Pleistocene treasure house
Jean-Paul Raynal, co-director of the program throughout the excavation that led to the discovery of fossil remains, emphasizes that “Thomas Quarry I lies within the raised coastal formations of the Rabat–Casablanca littoral, a region internationally renowned for its exceptional succession of Plio-Pleistocene palaeoshorelines, coastal dunes and cave systems. These geological formations, resulting from repeated sea-level oscillations, aeolian phases, and rapid early cementation of coastal sands, offer ideal conditions for fossil and archaeological preservation”. As a result, the Casablanca region has become one of Africa’s richest repositories of Pleistocene palaeontology and archaeology, documenting the early Acheulean and its developments, diverse faunas reflecting environmental change, and several phases of hominin occupation.
Thomas Quarry I, excavated into the Oulad Hamida Formation, is particularly well known for containing the oldest Acheulean industries of north-western Africa dated to around 1.3 million years ago and lies close to other celebrated sites such as Sidi Abderrahmane, a classic reference for Middle Pleistocene prehistory in the Northwest Africa. Within this wider complex, the “Grotte à Hominidés” constitutes “a unique cave system carved by a marine highstand into earlier coastal formations and later filled with sediments that preserved hominin fossils in a secure, undisturbed and undisputable stratigraphic context,” explains David Lefèvre.
A uniquely well-dated hominin assemblage in Africa
Dating Early and Middle Pleistocene fossils is notoriously difficult, due to discontinuous stratigraphies or methods affected by considerable uncertainty. The Grotte à Hominidés is exceptional because rapid sedimentation and continuous deposition allowed to capture a high-resolution magnetic signal recorded within sediments with remarkable detail.
Earth’s magnetic field reverses polarity episodically over geological time. These paleomagnetic reversals occur worldwide and almost instantaneously on geological timescales, leaving in sediments a sharp, globally synchronous signal. The Matuyama–Brunhes transition (MBT), which occurred around 773,000 years ago, is the most recent of these major reversals and constitutes one of the most precise markers available to geologists and archaeologists. As Serena Perini explains: “Seeing the Matuyama–Brunhes transition recorded with such resolution in the ThI-GH deposits allows us to anchor the presence of these hominins within an exceptionally precise chronological framework for the African Pleistocene.”
The Grotte à Hominidés sequence spans the end of the Matuyama Chron (reverse polarity), the MBT itself, and the onset of the Brunhes Chron (normal polarity). Using 180 magnetostratigraphic samples - an unprecedented resolution for a Pleistocene hominin site - the team established the exact position of the reverse-to-normal switch, currently dated at 773,000 years, and even captured the short duration of the transition (8,000 to 11,000 years). It is chronologically valuable that the sediments containing the hominin fossils were deposited precisely during this transition. Additional faunal evidence independently supports this age, affirming the primacy of magnetostratigraphy over other methods for establishing the chronology of this site.
Hominins close to the root of the Homo sapiens lineage
The hominin remains come from what appears to have been a carnivore den, as suggested by a hominin femur showing clear traces of gnawing and consumption. The assemblage includes a nearly complete adult mandible, a second adult half mandible, a child mandible, several vertebrae, and isolated teeth.
High-resolution micro-CT imaging, geometric morphometrics, and comparative anatomical analysis reveal a mosaic of archaic and derived traits. Several characteristics recall hominins from Gran Dolina, Atapuerca, of comparable age – the so-called Homo antecessor - suggesting that very ancient population contacts between north-west Africa and southern Europe may once have existed. However, by the time of the Matuyama–Brunhes transition, these populations appear to have been already clearly separated, implying that any such exchanges must have occurred earlier.
Matthew Skinner notes: "Using microCT imaging we were able to study a hidden internal structure of the teeth, referred to as the enamel-dentine junction, which is known to be taxonomically informative and which is preserved in teeth where the enamel surface is worn away. Analysis of this structure consistently shows the Grotte à Hominidés hominins to be distinct from both Homo erectus and Homo antecessor, identifying them as representative of populations that could be basal to Homo sapiens and archaic Eurasian lineages."
Shara Bailey confirms the generalized shape and traits of the Grotte à Hominidés teeth, noting that "In their shapes and non-metric traits, the teeth from Grotte à Hominidés retain many primitive features and lack the traits that are characteristic of Neandertals. In this sense, they differ from Homo antecessor, which - in some features - are beginning to resemble Neandertals. The dental morphological analyses indicate that regional differences in human populations may have been already present by the end of the Early Pleistocene".
A new window on the last common ancestor of humans and Neandertals
This discovery highlights that Northwest Africa played a major role in the early evolutionary history of the genus Homo, at a time when climatic oscillations periodically opened ecological corridors across what is now the Sahara. As Denis Geraads notes: “The idea that the Sahara was a permanent biogeographic barrier does not hold for this period. The palaeontological evidence shows repeated connections between Northwest Africa and the savannas of the East and South.”
The hominins from the Grotte à Hominidés are almost contemporaneous with the hominins from Gran Dolina, older than Middle Pleistocene fossils ancestral to Neanderthals and Denisovans, and roughly 500,000 years earlier than the earliest Homo sapiens remains from Jebel Irhoud. In their combination of archaic African traits with traits that approach later Eurasian and African Middle Pleistocene morphologies, the hominins from the Grotte à Hominidés provide essential clues about the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans—estimated from genetic evidence to have lived between 765,000 and 550,000 years ago. Paleontological evidence from the Grotte à Hominidés aligns most closely with the older part of this interval.
Jean-Jacques Hublin concludes that “the fossils from the Grotte à Hominidés may be the best candidates we currently have for African populations lying near the root of this shared ancestry, thus reinforcing the view of a deep African origin for our species.“
Both sides of one of the arrowheads analysed. The left-hand image shows the organic remains in which the arrowhead residues were identified. Photo: Marlize Lombard
Researchers have identified traces of plant poison from the South African plant gifbol on Stone Age arrowheads – the oldest known arrow poison in the world to date. The discovery, published in the scientific journal Science Advances, shows that 60,000 years ago, people in southern Africa had already developed advanced knowledge of toxic substances and how they could be used for hunting.
Researchers from South Africa and Sweden have found the oldest traces of arrow poison in the world to date. On 60,000-year-old quartz arrowheads from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, researchers have identified chemical residues of poison from the plant gifbol (Boophone disticha), a poisonous plant still used by traditional hunters in the region.
“This is the result of a long and close collaboration between researchers in South Africa and Sweden. Being able to identify the world's oldest arrow poison together has been a complex undertaking and is incredibly encouraging for continued research,” says Professor Sven Isaksson at the Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University, an expert in the analysis of organic residues in archaeological materials who carried out the chemical analyses.
Oldest evidence of arrow poison
“This is the oldest direct evidence that humans used arrow poison. It shows that our ancestors in southern Africa not only invented the bow and arrow much earlier than previously thought, but also understood how to use nature’s chemistry to increase hunting efficiency,” says Professor Marlize Lombard, a researcher at the Palaeo-Research Institute at the University of Johannesburg.
Chemical analyses revealed the presence of the alkaloids buphanidrine and epibuphanisine, substances found in the plant Boophone disticha – also known as gifbol (i.e. poisonous onion). The plant has long been known among local hunters for its highly toxic properties.
Similar substances were also found on 250-year-old arrowheads in Swedish collections, which were collected by travellers during the 18th century. The fact that the same plant poison was used in both historical and prehistoric times indicates a long continuity of knowledge and tradition.
“Finding traces of the same poison on both prehistoric and historical arrowheads was crucial,” says Professor Sven Isaksson. “By carefully studying the chemical structure of the substances and thus drawing conclusions about their properties, we were able to determine that these particular substances are stable enough to survive this long in the ground,” he continues. “It’s also fascinating that people had such a deep and long-standing understanding of the use of plants.”
Advanced planning abilities
Previously, indirect traces of poison have been used to interpret hunting practices, but the findings from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter constitute the first direct evidence of hunting with poisoned arrows. The study shows that these early hunters not only had technical skills but also advanced planning abilities and an understanding of how poisons work over time – characteristics that reflect modern human cognition.
“Using arrow poison requires planning, patience and an understanding of cause and effect. It is a clear sign of advanced thinking in early humans,” says Professor Anders Högberg at the Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University.
Migration into England was continuous from the Romans through to the Normans and men and women moved from different places and at different rates, a study finds.
The researchers found early medieval migrants came to England from the Mediterranean and from the Arctic Circle and beyond.
The major bioarchaeological study gives a new perspective to early medieval texts and ancient DNA, researchers say.
The study of human tooth enamel also showed climate events such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climate Anomaly.
The study by researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge is the first large scale analysis of isotopic and ancient DNA data in cemeteries from early medieval England to assess movement.
Researchers traced the roots of population movements to England during what is known as the early medieval period – the period spanning from the end of Roman rule in Britain, around 1600 years ago, through to the arrival of the Normans more than 900 years ago.
Analysis of chemical signatures found in the teeth of ancient skeletons show that population movement was a consistent feature of England between the 4th and the 11th centuries, the study found.
Researchers used bioarchaeological techniques to study more than 700 chemical signatures from the teeth of human skeletal remains of people buried in England from around AD 400 to 1100.
The team compared this with ancient DNA from 316 individuals to compare movement versus ancestry.
Evidence from tooth enamel – which can show if a person consumed food or water which was chemically different from food and drink from their place of burial – also captured climate fluctuations such as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a period of rapid cooling in the 6th and 7th centuries, and evidence of newcomers from colder regions.
The team found that migration appeared to be continuous – rather than tied to one off events – with a significant spike in the seventh and eighth centuries.
Male migration appeared to be more prominent – although there was also notable female mobility particularly into the North East, Kent and Wessex.
The researchers found evidence of migration into England from Wales and Ireland. The data also offered evidence of migration and settlement from northwest Europe and the Mediterranean, the researchers say.
The researchers looked at how the main documented sources of mobility – such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – aligned with the bioarchaeological findings sourced from the study of human skeletal remains.
The use of biomolecular data provides new evidence to answer questions about the nature and scale of early medieval migration, the researchers say.
Dr Sam Leggett of the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, said: “The study took a ‘big data’ approach to assess the narratives around early medieval migration. We see here that migration was a consistent feature rather that just tied to one off events, with evidence of communities in continual cross-cultural contact, tied into large scale networks which may have contributed to the major socio-cultural changes we see throughout the period.”
Dr Susanne Hakenbeck, of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, said: “Our study shows that migration to Britain was fairly continuous throughout the first millennium. We didn’t expect to see a spike in mobility in the 7th and 8th centuries – well after the period of the so-called Anglo-Saxon migrations. This study – incidentally co-authored by two migrants – also shows that Britain was never isolated from the continent.”
