At the end of the Stone Age, populations in Scandinavia and northwest Europe drastically decreased, leading to the abandonment of settlements and the end of megalithic construction.
A new genomic study suggests that a Neolithic plague could have spread from small farming villages to larger settlements, which might explain the demographic collapse.
Until now, scientists believed the oldest strain of the plague lacked the potential for epidemic spread; recent findings suggest this theory is no longer tenable.
The proposed mechanism for the plague's spread is through traders who traveled via horse-drawn carts, which may have facilitated the pandemic across regions.
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