Researchers find sheeppox virus DNA in medieval parchment documents
- Ancient parchment documents crafted from animal skins preserve fragmented viral DNA for over a thousand years, revealing that deadly pathogens plagued early livestock centuries before modern record-keeping.
- University of York and Bodleian Library projects provided genetic data from cattle, sheep, and goat skins primarily used in religious documents across central and western Europe.
- Beyond medieval manuscripts, researchers screened ancient animal remains and recovered even older viral genomes from two sheep teeth originating on the Eurasian steppe, dated to roughly 3,700 and...
Ancient parchment documents crafted from animal skins preserve fragmented viral DNA for over a thousand years, revealing that deadly pathogens plagued early livestock centuries before modern record-keeping. Researchers analyzing medieval European manuscripts dating from roughly AD 700 to 1400 discovered strong genetic evidence of the sheeppox virus, a relative of smallpox that remains lethal and highly infectious to sheep today.
Detecting Sheeppox DNA in Medieval Manuscripts
University of York and Bodleian Library projects provided genetic data from cattle, sheep, and goat skins primarily used in religious documents across central and western Europe. Researchers found sheeppox virus DNA in 32 parchment folia, demonstrating that biological signatures of ancient infections can survive the skin-to-parchment transformation. Inside the York Gospels, a surviving pre-Normal Conquest manuscript produced around AD 990, scientists recovered virus DNA from three pages, including a legal document appended centuries later. Careful sampling using erasers removed minimal surface material for biomolecular analysis without damaging the priceless artifacts. Additional traces emerged within the Corpus Glossary, a combined Latin and Old English dictionary compiled around AD 800. Fifteenth-century paper samples from Clairvaux in north-west France also contained pathogen DNA, likely introduced through animal collagen or parchment scraps used to strengthen the paper.
Tracing Viral Evolution Through Ancient Teeth
Beyond medieval manuscripts, researchers screened ancient animal remains and recovered even older viral genomes from two sheep teeth originating on the Eurasian steppe, dated to roughly 3,700 and 3,200 years old. These findings align with historical descriptions by the Roman writer Columella, who documented a pusula disease affecting sheep in his treatise On Agriculture between 60-65 BC. Genetic analysis of the ancient tooth samples allowed scientists to estimate when the sheeppox virus split from its closest Capripoxvirus relatives that infect goats and cattle. The results indicate that farming communities have battled the lethal livestock virus for millennia, providing a deeper historical timeline of animal disease than previously understood from written records alone.
