The cave of Hagios Charalambos near the Cretan town of Malia was used from the Neolithic Age up to the Minoan culture as a repository for human remains that had previously been buried elsewhere.

The climatic conditions there are extremely favorable for the preservation of the bones, so that in many cases remnants of the respective genome can be detected.

An international research team led by Gunnar U. Neumann from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has now examined 68 teeth from the cave, ten of which could be dated to the period between 2290 and 1909 BC - they come from at least 32 people.

In the current issue of Current Biology, the researchers report that they found traces of the plague pathogen Yersinia pestis and the bacterium Salmonella enterica in some of the teeth.

They suggest that the social and political changes in the eastern Mediterranean region of this period, such as the decline of the Old Kingdom of Egypt and the kingdom of Akkad, should also be viewed in connection with the pathogens identified here.