The bubonic plague outbreak began in 1338 in Kyrgyzstan and spread across the Mediterranean via the Silk Road before triggering a 500-year pandemic, new research in the journal Nature has found.
Where did this pandemic start?
The Black Death was the deadliest pandemic in human history; it swept away up to 60% of the European population during the Middle Ages (and 200 million people overall). The geographical origins of the devastating plague in the fourteenth century AD. C. have long been the subject of controversy, with previous research making predictions as wide as western Eurasia to China. Now, this new research carried out by an international team of scientists believes they have found the “ground zero” of the pandemic, at Lake Issyk-Kul, in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the heart of the Asian continent.
Gravestone inscriptions in cemeteries in this area, written in Cyrillic, were thoroughly re-examined in 2017 by historian Phil Slavin, an associate professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He noted that of the 467 burials that were accurately dated, a disproportionate number, 118, were from just two years: 1338 and 1339. It’s a revelation he described as “staggering”. Something was happening.
Genetic evidence can now prove that the graves do, in fact, contain the bodies of some of the earliest known victims of the plague.
The researchers recovered ancient DNA traces of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis from the teeth of three women buried in a medieval Nestorian Christian community in the Chu Valley near Lake Issyk Kul who perished in 1338-1339. Inscriptions on some of the tombstones listed the cause of death as “mawtānā”, the Cyrillic term for “pestilence”.
Solved a mystery almost 700 years old
Three of these women’s teeth contained DNA from Yersinia pestis , the bacterium that causes bubonic plague. The reconstruction of the genome of the pathogen showed that this strain not only gave rise to the one that caused the Black Death that devastated Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, but also to most of the plague strains that exist today.
In 1347, the plague first entered the Mediterranean through trading ships carrying goods from territories around the Black Sea. Then, the disease spread throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, affecting up to 60% of the population, according to the study.
The closest living relative of the Black Death strain has been found in rodents in the same region, the researchers said. Although humans continue to be infected with bubonic plague, better hygiene and less contact with rat fleas that can spread the infection to humans have prevented more deadly pandemics around the world.
” Our study puts to rest one of the biggest and most fascinating questions in history and determines when and where the most notorious and infamous killer of humans began,” the authors say.
M. Spyrou et al. The source of the Black Death in fourteenth-century central Eurasia. Nature. Published June 15, 2022. doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04800-3.
B. Bramanti et al. Assessing the origins of the European plagues following the Black Death: A synthesis of genomic, historical and ecological information. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published August 31, 2021. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2101940118.
M.H. Green. The four Black Deaths. The American Historical Review. Vol. 125, December 2020, p. 1601. doi: 10.1093/ahr/rhaa511.
