Mystery over death of 15 million Aztecs may be solved after nearly 500 years, study suggests

Scientists believe they may have discovered the cause of an epidemic that struck Mexico’s Aztec population in 1545, killing up to 15 million people. In a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, they describe how DNA extracted from the teeth of 29 skeletons buried in a cemetery in southern Mexico revealed previously unidentified traces of the salmonella enterica bacterium. The epidemic was one of several to hit the indigenous population soon after the arrival of Europeans in the early 16th century.

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