Mysterious Epidemic in Mexico Solved With Ancient DNA
Researchers believe they have identified a likely cause for a 16th-century epidemic that decimated a group of indigenous Mesoamerican people known as the Mixtec—and it’s related to the bug that might give you food poisoning after a bad barbecue.
Beginning in 2004, researchers found and exhumed several bodiesfrom the more than 800 buried in mass graves near a churchyard cemetery at an archaeological site called Teposcolula-Yucundaa. DNA from a strain of turned up in the remains of people who died during this epidemic—specifically, in the pulpy
