Ancient Viruses Awakened: Could They Trigger the Next Pandemic?

In 2014, a team of French and Russian scientists unearthed a 30,000 - year - old giant virus from Siberia’s frozen tundra - a pathogen dubbed Mollivirus sibericum. Dormant since the Ice Age, it was revived in a lab, infecting amoebas with eerie efficiency. Fast forward to 2025, and the stakes are higher than ever. Cyclical climate change is accelerating permafrost melt, releasing ancient viruses into a world already scarred by pandemics like COVID - 19. Meanwhile, paleogenomics - the study of ancient DNA - has revealed viral traces in human genomes linked to psychiatric disorders, as reported by Ancient Origins in 2024. These discoveries are ticking time bombs. Could these awakened pathogens, preserved for millennia, unleash the next global plague? Let’s explore the history, the science, and the chilling risks we face today.