An international research team led by the University of Vienna and the University of Tartu (Estonia) — in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and University College London — has shown that ancient genomes of human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B (HHV-6A/B) entered the human genome and then co-evolved with humans over the last 2,000 years. Their study, published in Science Advances a few days ago, confirms that these viruses have been evolving with, and within, humans since at least the Iron Age.
A common creationist claim, rooted in ignorance of what genetic information actually is, is that new genetic information cannot be created. Claims that new genetic information cannot arise because it would violate the laws of thermodynamics rely on a fundamental category error. The second law applies to closed systems, whereas every biological system on Earth is emphatically open, continuously exchanging energy and matter with its environment. Local decreases in entropy are not only permitted but expected in open systems supplied with external energy — which, on Earth, is overwhelmingly provided by the Sun. Crystals grow, snowflakes form, embryos develop, and genomes increase in length and complexity without violating any physical law.
Moreover, information is not a conserved physical quantity like energy. Shannon information theory concerns the statistical properties of signals in communication channels; it says nothing about biological meaning, function, or heredity. Treating genetic information as though it were interchangeable with thermodynamic entropy is simply a misuse of terminology. When genomes gain duplicated genes, viral insertions, or transferred sequences, no atoms are created, no laws are broken, and no special pleading is required — just chemistry operating under well-understood physical principles.
The creationist claim is flatly contradicted by straightforward observations of several well-understood mechanisms by which new genetic information can enter a species’ genome. These include gene duplication or whole-genome duplication, horizontal gene transfer from one species to another (particularly common in parasite–host relationships), and — as demonstrated by the research discussed here — the insertion of viral DNA into the genome. This last process gives rise to endogenous viral elements that are ubiquitous in biology and which precisely match evolutionary trees established independently from multiple other lines of evidence.
Endogenous viral insertions are especially devastating for the creationist concept of immutable “created kinds”. Viral DNA does not insert itself independently at exactly the same genomic locations in unrelated lineages by chance. When identical viral sequences are found embedded at the same chromosomal positions in different populations — and when their accumulated mutations form nested hierarchical patterns — they provide a precise historical record of shared ancestry.
The HHV-6A/B insertions documented in this study behave exactly as evolutionary theory predicts: they enter the genome at a particular point in time, are inherited by descendants, accumulate mutations at measurable rates, and track human population history. There is no coherent creationist explanation for why a designer would place broken, mutating viral sequences into genomes in patterns that perfectly mirror evolutionary trees derived independently from anatomy, archaeology, and population genetics.
If humans were created as a distinct “kind”, there is no reason for their genomes to contain time-stamped viral relics tracing population divergence over millennia. But if humans evolved — and if viruses have co-evolved with us — this is precisely the pattern we expect to find. The data fit evolution effortlessly, while creationism is left inventing ad hoc excuses to deny what the genome itself records.
Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs)^ Molecular Fossils of Common Ancestry.The work of the University of Vienna-led team is explained in a Universität Wien press release.
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are the remains of ancient retroviruses that infected germ-line cells and became permanently embedded in the host genome. Once inserted, these viral sequences are inherited by all descendants, accumulating mutations over time and gradually decaying into non-functional genetic relics.
Because retroviruses integrate at specific, effectively random chromosomal locations, the chance of the same virus independently inserting into the same genomic position in unrelated species is vanishingly small. Yet related species routinely share ERVs at identical loci, often flanked by the same host DNA and carrying the same disabling mutations. These shared genetic scars form an unambiguous record of common ancestry.
Across major vertebrate groups, ERVs appear exactly where evolution predicts: fish possess ERVs absent from land vertebrates; amphibians share some ERVs with reptiles and mammals; reptiles and mammals share others absent from amphibians; placental mammals share ERVs not found in marsupials; and primates share thousands absent from other mammals. At every branching point, ERVs form nested hierarchies that mirror evolutionary trees derived independently from fossils, anatomy, and comparative genetics.
The human–chimpanzee comparison provides a clear worked example. Humans and chimpanzees share thousands of ERVs at identical chromosomal locations, many with the same mutations and deletions. Some ERVs are shared by humans, chimps, and gorillas; others only by humans and chimps; others are species-specific. This layered pattern precisely matches known primate relationships and divergence times, with older ERVs showing more accumulated mutations than younger ones.
There is no coherent creationist explanation for why a designer would insert broken viral DNA into genomes and arrange it in patterns that precisely track evolutionary history. ERVs are powerful evidence not because they are functional or complex, but because they are broken, redundant, and historically constrained — exactly what evolution predicts, and design does not.
First ancient human herpesvirus genomes document their deep history with humans
Genomic data confirm that certain human herpesviruses became part of the human genome thousands of years ago
For the first time, scientists have reconstructed ancient genomes of Human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B (HHV-6A/B) from archaeological human remains more than two millennia old. The study, led by the University of Vienna and University of Tartu (Estonia) and published in Science Advances, confirms that these viruses have been evolving with and within humans since at least the Iron Age. The findings trace the long history of HHV-6 integration into human chromosomes and suggest that HHV-6A lost this ability early on.
HHV-6B infects about 90 percent of children by the age of two and is best known as the cause of roseola infantum – or "sixth disease" – the leading cause of febrile seizures in young children. Together with its close relative HHV-6A, it belongs to a group of widespread human herpesviruses that typically establish lifelong, latent infections after an initial mild illness in early childhood. What makes them exceptional is their ability to integrate into human chromosomes – a feature that allows the virus to remain dormant and, in rare cases, to be inherited as part of the host's own genome. Such inherited viral copies occur in roughly one percent of people today. While earlier studies had hypothesized that these integrations were ancient, the new data from this study provide the first direct genomic proof.
Recovering viral DNA from the distant past
An international research team led by the University of Vienna and the University of Tartu (Estonia) – in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and University College London – screened nearly 4,000 human skeletal samples from archaeological sites across Europe. Eleven ancient viral genomes were identified and reconstructed – the oldest from a young girl of the Iron Age Italy (1100–600 BCE). The remaining individuals covered a wide geographic and temporal range: Both types of HHV were found in medieval England, Belgium and Estonia, while HHV-6B also appeared in samples from Italy and early historic Russia. Several of the English individuals carried inherited forms of HHV-6B, making them the earliest known carriers of chromosomally integrated human herpesviruses. The Belgian site of Sint-Truiden yielded the largest number of cases, with both viral species circulating within the same population.
While HHV-6 infects almost 90% of the human population at some point in their life, only around 1% carry the virus, which was inherited from your parents, in all cells of their body. These 1% of cases are what we are most likely to identify using ancient DNA, making the search for viral sequences quite difficult. Based on our data, the viruses' evolution can now be traced over more than 2,500 years across Europe, using genomes from the 8th-6th century BCE until today.
Meriam Guellil, lead author
Department for Evolutionary Anthropology
University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria.
Ancient integrations, lasting consequences
The recovered genomes allowed the researchers to determine where in the chromosomes the viruses had integrated. Comparisons with modern data revealed that some integrations happened a very long time ago and passed down through generations for millennia. One of the two viral species (HHV-6A) appears to have lost its ability to integrate into human DNA over time – evidence that these viruses have evolved differently while coexisting with their human hosts.Carrying a copy of HHV6B in your genome has been linked to angina–heart-disease. We know that these inherited forms of HHV6A and B are more common in the UK today compared to the rest of Europe, and this is the first evidence of ancient carriers from Britain.
Charlotte Houldcroft, co-author
Department of Genetics
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK.
A new chapter in virus–host evolution
The discovery of these ancient HHV-6 genomes provides the first time-stamped evidence for the long-term co-evolution of this virus with humans at the genomic level. It also shows how ancient DNA can reveal the long-term evolution of infectious diseases – from short-lived childhood infections to viral sequences that became part of the human genome. Discovered only in the 1980s, HHV-6A and HHV-6B can now be traced back to the Iron Age, offering direct genomic evidence for an ancient, shared history between viruses and humans.
Modern genetic data suggested that HHV-6 may have been evolving with humans since our migration out of Africa," says Guellil. "These ancient genomes now provide first concrete proof of their presence in the deep human past.
Meriam Guellil.
Publication:
As usual, this evidence will be waved away in creationist circles as “not evolution”, dismissed as faulty dating, or redefined out of existence by invoking vague notions of “kind”. None of these evasions engages with the actual data. Viral insertions entering genomes, being inherited, accumulating mutations, and tracking population history over millennia are not optional extras bolted onto evolutionary theory — they are precisely what the theory predicts should happen in a world where life has a deep history.
Nor does this research merely show change within a lineage. The mechanisms on display here — viral integration, mutation, inheritance, and divergence — are the very processes by which genomes grow, diversify, and split into distinct lineages over time. The same processes that leave time-stamped viral relics in human DNA also underpin the broader pattern of common descent linking all life on Earth.
Creationism, by contrast, has no predictive framework capable of explaining why genomes are littered with broken viral sequences arranged in nested hierarchies that independently confirm evolutionary relationships. Each new genomic study tightens the constraints, leaving fewer and fewer places for ad hoc excuses to hide. Once again, the evidence does not merely fail to support creationist claims — it actively contradicts them.
The genome, it turns out, keeps better records than any ancient text. And those records continue to tell the same story: not of sudden magical creation, but of deep time, shared ancestry, and an evolutionary history written indelibly into our DNA.
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