1,600-Year-Old Boat Burial in Germany Reveals a Rare Leprosy Strain

A man buried in an oak boat in northwestern Germany about 1,600 years ago carried a strain of the leprosy bacterium that had never been found in Central or Northern Europe, according to a study published online Oct. 15 in the journal iScience and reported by Live Science.

The strain may have evolved in Egypt around the fourth to second centuries B.C., the researchers said. Finding it in a grave on the North Sea coast suggests the man had traveled widely or spent time with people from distant corners of the Roman world.

A grave unlike the others at Fallward

The burial comes from Fallward, a coastal settlement that started in the first century B.C. and slowly turned into a cemetery by the fifth century A.D. Excavations in the 1990s uncovered 200 cremation burials and 60 inhumation burials there. One of them stood out: a grave built from a wooden boat more than 13 feet (4 meters) long, closed with a structure resembling a roof.

Inside lay a man who was about 50 when he died, some time between A.D. 425 and 450. He was buried with a small box in the shape of a water bird, a carved alder-wood chair or throne, a bronze basin, and a maple stool decorated with a hunting scene and a runic inscription. He also had a late Roman military belt. Hauke Jöns of the Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research said the belt pointed to connections over great distances.

His upper arm bones were well developed, and many of the objects relate to the sea. The team wrote that he may have worked as a fisherman or boatman shortly before his death.

What the DNA showed

Researchers at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology at Kiel University sequenced the genomes of a dozen people from the site. For the boat burial, the genetic results placed the man’s origins in the Danube region, said Daniel Myburgh, the study’s first author.

The team also recovered DNA from Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium behind leprosy, in one of his teeth and in a bone from his foot. The genetic material was well preserved, so the researchers could identify the exact strain. Myburgh described it as “a very rare leprosy pathogen.”

His skeleton, though, showed no leprosy lesions. The disease first damages nerves and skin and can later erode bone, especially in the nose, jaw, hands and feet. Biologist Almut Nebel, a co-author, said the man either had a form of the infection without symptoms or the disease had reached only his soft tissues. She added that he may have traveled long distances while infected.

Who was the man in the boat?

The researchers do not know his life story. Co-author Ben Krause-Kyora suggested he could have served as a mercenary in the Roman army and later settled between the Elbe and Weser rivers. In that version, he became a respected member of the community, which would explain the alder-wood throne in his grave.

The team also offered other explanations for the belt. He may have obtained it through trade, received it as an inheritance or taken it as a war trophy. These ideas are interpretations by the authors, not settled facts.

Why it matters

Ancient DNA can follow diseases and people across regions where written records say little. Here, a pathogen strain tied to Egypt turned up in a man from the Danube region who was buried on the German coast. That combination, along with his grave goods, suggests northwest Germany kept long-distance links across Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, the researchers said in a Nov. 3 statement from Kiel University.

The finding also extends the known range of this leprosy strain. Until now, it had not been recorded anywhere in Central or Northern Europe.

Source: Live Science