The origin of the Black Death is still yet to be identified, even after centuries of heated debate from historians. Now, earlier last Wednesday, a group of researchers brought light to this unsolved case, with samples of multiple victim’s teeth from the 14th century.
The Bubonic Plague, better known as the Black Death, is an infamous disease that spread throughout Eurasia back in the 1300s, killing around 25 million people. The disease was caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that is carried by fleas that live on rodents. The disease is still present today, carried by rodents on every continent, except Australia.
Researchers Wolfgang Haak and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Science of Human History in Germany as well as Philip Slavin of the University of Stirling in Scotland found and used the data from the teeth. The analysis historians used to trace the epidemic’s path is shown to likely have begun in China, near the western border of China, and moved along trade routes to the rest of the old world.
The studies discovered that the Black Death arrived in 1338 or 1339 near IssykKul, a lake in a mountainous area just west of China in what is now Kyrgyzstan, based on their analysis of the preserved genetic material. The plague was first believed to infect people in a small, nearby settlement of traders eight years before it devastated Eurasia, killing 60 percent of the population.
More than a decade ago, the group led a study which stunned archaeologists with their report that they could find plague bacteria DNA in the teeth of skeletons. These skeletons belonged to 14th-century Londoners who saw the Black Death coming, and consecrated a graveyard in advance to be prepared for its victims. Fortunately for them, not only were these victims from a plague graveyard, but the date of their death was also known.
The search for the plague’s origin “is like a detective story,” states Dr. Fissell. “Now they have really good evidence of the scene of the crime.”
From there, the group gathered more and more genetic material from plague victims at other sites, building a DNA family tree of the plague bacteria variants. It and other researchers reported that the tree had a trunk and then, all at once, seemed to explode into four branches of Y. pestis strains whose descendants are found today in rodents. They named this event “the Big Bang” and began a search to find when and where it occurred.
After collecting much data, it seems that “the Big Bang” happened right before the Black Death in Eurasia, indicating that the plague’s spread was most likely through trade routes. Dr. Green and other historians have suggested that “the Big Bang” happened when Mongols in the early 13th century spread the bacteria. But if that had been the case, the bacteria in Kyrgyzstan would have been from one of the branches and not the ancestral strain.
Dr. Green said she was convinced that the group had found plague victims in Kyrgyzstan. But she said the evidence available now was insufficient to justify its bold claims.
The Bubonic Plague, better known as the Black Death, is an infamous disease that spread throughout Eurasia back in the 1300s, killing around 25 million people. The disease was caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that is carried by fleas that live on rodents. The disease is still present today, carried by rodents on every continent, except Australia.
Researchers Wolfgang Haak and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Science of Human History in Germany as well as Philip Slavin of the University of Stirling in Scotland found and used the data from the teeth. The analysis historians used to trace the epidemic’s path is shown to likely have begun in China, near the western border of China, and moved along trade routes to the rest of the old world.
The studies discovered that the Black Death arrived in 1338 or 1339 near IssykKul, a lake in a mountainous area just west of China in what is now Kyrgyzstan, based on their analysis of the preserved genetic material. The plague was first believed to infect people in a small, nearby settlement of traders eight years before it devastated Eurasia, killing 60 percent of the population.
More than a decade ago, the group led a study which stunned archaeologists with their report that they could find plague bacteria DNA in the teeth of skeletons. These skeletons belonged to 14th-century Londoners who saw the Black Death coming, and consecrated a graveyard in advance to be prepared for its victims. Fortunately for them, not only were these victims from a plague graveyard, but the date of their death was also known.
The search for the plague’s origin “is like a detective story,” states Dr. Fissell. “Now they have really good evidence of the scene of the crime.”
From there, the group gathered more and more genetic material from plague victims at other sites, building a DNA family tree of the plague bacteria variants. It and other researchers reported that the tree had a trunk and then, all at once, seemed to explode into four branches of Y. pestis strains whose descendants are found today in rodents. They named this event “the Big Bang” and began a search to find when and where it occurred.
After collecting much data, it seems that “the Big Bang” happened right before the Black Death in Eurasia, indicating that the plague’s spread was most likely through trade routes. Dr. Green and other historians have suggested that “the Big Bang” happened when Mongols in the early 13th century spread the bacteria. But if that had been the case, the bacteria in Kyrgyzstan would have been from one of the branches and not the ancestral strain.
Dr. Green said she was convinced that the group had found plague victims in Kyrgyzstan. But she said the evidence available now was insufficient to justify its bold claims.
