Pathogen emergence and adaptation are constant, but the mechanisms underlying pathogen success as well as host susceptibility and resistance are often only observable in time series data. Ancient DNA research of pathogens and their hosts provides unique insights into past occurrences, including the changes that led to pathogen jumps between animals and humans, pandemic outbreaks, the timing of such events and the genetic, cultural and ecological factors that affect pathogen success and human survival and recovery. Recent technological improvements and the increasing number of ancient samples analysed have enabled the unprecedented investigation of pathogen evolution. Such studies are poised to benefit from the increased diversity of sequenced ancient pathogens, adoption of a broader framework that considers the entire ecosystem of host-pathogen interactions and growing collaboration with related fields.
Blevins et al. (2025) studied this question.