The ‘Big Bang’ of the Black Death

A group of European researchers has purportedly discovered the origin of the Black Death (aka bubonic plague), one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, according to a new peer-reviewed study published in Nature.

🦠 Background: The Black Death is caused by a bacterium carried by fleas living on rodents in every country except Australia, though the disease is considered harmless nowadays due to improved hygiene and antibiotics.

• It was responsible for an outbreak in the mid-14th century that killed an estimated 30% of Europe’s entire population, including ~70% of England's, though the source of that outbreak has remained unknown… until now.

🪦🪦 Here’s how it went down… Several years ago, scientists came across records from two 14th-century cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan with an unusually high number of tombstones, all roughly dated to a decade before the start of the Black Death pandemic. Ten explicitly referenced a pestilence.

• To determine whether the plague could've been the cause of death, researchers tracked down several remains from the cemetery, which had been moved to Russia.
• After sequencing DNA from seven people whose remains were recovered, they discovered three of them had been infected with a direct ancestor of the Black Death.
• The region occupied a prominent position along the ancient Silk Road trading routes, which most likely facilitated the spread of the disease.