Seven types of viruses that have lain frozen in the Siberian permafrost for thousands of years have been revived. The youngest were frozen for 27,000 years, while the oldest was on ice for 48,500 years – making it the most ancient virus resuscitated so far.
“48,500 years is a world record,” says Jean-Michel Claverie at Aix-Marseille University in France, who did the work with his colleagues. His team has previously revived two 30,000-year-old viruses.
Smallpox developed after the Bearing Land Bridge migration happened. Smallpox was an evolution of man creating cities with certain domesticated livestock not found in the New World.
Smallpox developed in the Old World after humans migrated and settled in the New World when they crossed the land bridge.
This virus, being discovered before the land bridge, show that it existed in the Old World and crossed over with Humans migrating to the New World.
Can it be a risk? Yes. Is it something to freak out over? No. Why? Because where it was found and more importantly, when it was around.
Smallpox is a common virus to Cattle. It jumped because of Humans building cities and having Cattle in them. It took thousands of years for that to happen. The New World never had Smallpox because they never had Cattle.
If this 48,000 year old virus was discovered in Finland, we might have something to worry about. The fact that it was discovered along a well traveled human migration path means most people got exposed to it, even those who traveled to the new world by crossing the Bering bridge.
This is unlike smallpox, which was a result of Europeans and near East domesticating animals for the first time and having thousands of years of built up immunity as a result. This is something nobody in the new world had so when the first conquistadors arrived from Europe, small pox did most of their work for them and continued to do so well into the late 19th century.
They have revived the Spanish Influenza (of 1918 infamy) and have it in “storage” at the CDC in Atlanta. This was done starting in the late 90’s until the early 2000’s. Harvested it from lung tissue of Eskimos buried in the perma-frost.
Did you know for a while the epi-center for TB was LA? We had pretty much eradicated it from North America in the 1950’s and 60’s. Suddenly we get untold amounts of South and Central American’s coming in primarily from war torn El Salvador and suddenly we have TB in LA.
Some things like unchecked immigration and well, just digging up some old virus from the perma frost, just shouldn’t be allowed to happen.