They gave us sanitation , wine , aqueducts and roads , but it seems the Romans also gave us one more addition to the list - tuberculosis . Researchers have isolated bacterial DNA of several strains of the disease from the bodies of mummies found in the crypt of a church in the city of Vác in Hungary . They found 14 different strains of TB bacteria that had infected eight of the bodies in the tomb and traced them all back to a single source . Mummified remains of 28-year-old Terézia Hausmann ( above ) found in the 18th century crypt of the Dominican church in Vác , Hungary , were among those found to have been infected with tuberculosis by the researchers . They say the strains of TB they found all evolved from a single germ that had began infecting people during the late Roman period . Professor Mark Pallen , a geneticist at Warwick University who led the work , said : 'By showing that historical strains can be accurately mapped to contemporary lineages , we have confirmed the genotypic continuity of an infection that has ravaged the heart of Europe since prehistoric times . ' Historians have long taught that Native American populations were almost wiped out by diseases such as tuberculosis , brought to the New World by European explorers . But a new theory suggests the arrival of seals and sea lions could in fact be to blame . Scientists believe the marine animals brought the disease to South America where it spread - long before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492 . While estimates vary , it is thought that 95 per cent of the 20 million people living in the Americas before the Europeans arrived were killed by ‘ new ’ diseases carried by explorers . Anthropological geneticists Anne Stone of Arizona State University and Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen in Germany have studied pre-Columbian Mycobacterial tuberculosis genomes . The team examined TB DNA from 1,000-year-old skeletons found in Peru as well as other samples and compared them to modern genomes . They found a clear relationship to TB lineages in animals - especially seals and sea lions . The study , which is published in the journal Nature Communications , used samples taken from the mummified remains of 26 people who had been buried in a cyrpt of Vác 's Dominican church during the 18th century . Workers attempting to restore the church stumbled on the remains of nearly 200 people in the crypt in 1994 . The bodies had become naturally mummified in the exceptionally dry air . The bodies , many of whom had been wealthy Catholics , had been placed in the crypt fully clothed and in coffins between 1731 and 1838 . Walled up and forgotten for about 150 years , the coffins were discovered when a construction worker tapped on a wall during renovation work . Part of the wall gave way to reveal coffins decotrated with skulls and stacked from floor to ceiling . The researchers found that eight of the 26 bodies they examined showed signs that they had died of tuberculosis , five of whom had suffered from multiple strains . It is the first evidence that mixed infections of multiple strains of TB were common in the 18th Century . The researchers found that all of the strains belonged to a lineage of Tuberculosis bacteria known as Lineage 4 , which still causes more than a million TB cases a year in Europe and America . By analysing the DNA from these bacteria , the researchers were able to trace back the evolutionary history of the different strains they found by looking for genetic changes that had occurred . Tuberculosis is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis . The researchers found several different . The mummies were discovered during restoration work at the Dominican church in Vác , Hungary ( above ) They found that they all seemed to stem from a single strain of tuberculosis that was in existence between 396CE-470CE . The Roman dating supports recent scientific estimates that tuberculosis first emerged about 6,000 years ago , although some have suggested the disease is tens of thousands of years old . Writing in the journal , the researchers said : 'Phylogenetic dating places the most recent common ancestor of this lineage in the late Roman period . 'Our dating is consistent with evidence that a strain containing the pks15/1 deletion was present in Britain by the second–fourth centuries CE . ' The findings also suggest that at the time when the mummies died , TB was already raging in Europe and killing large numbers of people even before urbanisation and crowded housing created devastating epidemics . The dry climate in the crypt preserved the bodies and clothing of the people placed there in the 18th century . The church where the mummies were found is in Vác in the Pest region of northern Hungary ( shown above ) Professor Pallen , who conducted the work along with researchers at the University Birmingham , University College London , the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest , said : 'Microbiological analysis of samples from contemporary TB patients usually report a single strain of tuberculosis per patient . 'By contrast , five of the eight bodies in our study yielded more than one type of tuberculosis - remarkably , from one individual , we obtained evidence of three distinct strains . ' Dr Gemma Kay , the first author of the study , added that their analysis had revealed some of the tragic toll the disease was having at the time . She said : 'Poignantly , we found evidence of an intimate link between strains from in a middle-aged mother and her grown-up daughter , suggesting both family members died from this devastating infection . '
More than 200 mummified bodies were found in a hidden crypt of the Dominican church in the city of Vác in Hungary during restoration work . Geneticists led by scientists at the University of Warwick studied samples from 26 of the bodies and found that eight of them had died of tuberculosis . They discovered DNA of 14 different strains of TB bacteria in the mummies . The researchers believe these are the first cases of TB-related deaths among people who lived before modern medicine was developed, but they have not yet been able to determine if any other diseases caused their death.