A 700-year-old pre-Hispanic mummy from Bolivia has been confirmed to contain DNA from *Streptococcus pyogenes*, the bacterium that causes scarlet fever and strep throat [1].
The discovery matters because it demonstrates that a major infectious disease was present in the Americas long before Europeans arrived, challenging the view that scarlet fever was introduced by colonists [1].
An international team of researchers—including scientists from the University of Tübingen and the University of Copenhagen—examined the remains recovered from a high-altitude Andean burial site in Bolivia [1]. The team used strict contamination controls and next‑generation sequencing to extract microbial DNA from bone and tooth samples.
DNA sequencing identified genetic markers that match modern strains of *Streptococcus pyogenes* with high confidence. The analysis also ruled out laboratory contamination, as the same bacterial signatures appeared in multiple independent extracts — a standard verification step in ancient‑pathogen work [2].
The researchers said the finding represents the earliest confirmed evidence of *S. pyogenes* in the Americas [1]. No earlier pre‑Columbian specimens have tested positive for this pathogen, and the result pushes back the timeline for scarlet‑fever‑related disease by several centuries.
The presence of the bacterium suggests that pre‑Hispanic populations in the Andean region experienced illnesses similar to modern scarlet fever, which could have influenced mortality patterns, social organization, and cultural practices. It also raises the possibility that other now‑extinct strains of the pathogen circulated in the New World, offering new avenues for studying ancient disease dynamics.
The study adds to a growing body of work showing that many pathogens thought to be introduced by Europeans were already endemic in the Americas. By expanding the known geographic and temporal range of *S. pyogenes*, the research invites a re‑examination of how infectious diseases shaped early societies across the continent.
“DNA analysis identified Streptococcus pyogenes in the pre‑Hispanic mummy.”
The Bolivian mummy’s bacterial DNA demonstrates that scarlet fever was not solely a post‑contact disease, implying that pre‑colonial societies contended with a broader spectrum of infections than previously documented. This insight will prompt historians and epidemiologists to revisit models of population health, migration, and cultural exchange in the pre‑Columbian Americas.
