The source of the Black Death in fourteenth-century central Eurasia
Spyrou M.A. Musralina L. Gnecchi Ruscone G.A. Kocher A. Borbone P.-G. Khartanovich V.I. Buzhilova A. Djansugurova L. Bos K.I. Kühnert D. Haak W. Slavin P. Krause J.
23 June 2022Nature Research
Nature
2022#606Issue 7915718 - 724 pp.
The origin of the medieval Black Death pandemic (ad 1346–1353) has been a topic of continuous investigation because of the pandemic’s extensive demographic impact and long-lasting consequences1,2. Until now, the most debated archaeological evidence potentially associated with the pandemic’s initiation derives from cemeteries located near Lake Issyk-Kul of modern-day Kyrgyzstan1,3–9. These sites are thought to have housed victims of a fourteenth-century epidemic as tombstone inscriptions directly dated to 1338–1339 state ‘pestilence’ as the cause of death for the buried individuals9. Here we report ancient DNA data from seven individuals exhumed from two of these cemeteries, Kara-Djigach and Burana. Our synthesis of archaeological, historical and ancient genomic data shows a clear involvement of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis in this epidemic event. Two reconstructed ancient Y. pestis genomes represent a single strain and are identified as the most recent common ancestor of a major diversification commonly associated with the pandemic’s emergence, here dated to the first half of the fourteenth century. Comparisons with present-day diversity from Y. pestis reservoirs in the extended Tian Shan region support a local emergence of the recovered ancient strain. Through multiple lines of evidence, our data support an early fourteenth-century source of the second plague pandemic in central Eurasia.
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Institute for Archaeological Sciences, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
Laboratory of Population Genetics, Institute of Genetics and Physiology, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Kazakh National University by al-Farabi, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Transmission, Infection, Diversification & Evolution Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Department of Physical Anthropology, Kunstkamera, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russian Federation
Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation
European Virus Bioinformatics Center (EVBC), Jena, Germany
Division of History, Heritage and Politics, University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom
Institute for Archaeological Sciences
Department of Archaeogenetics
Department of Archaeogenetics
Laboratory of Population Genetics
Kazakh National University by al-Farabi
Transmission
Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge
Department of Physical Anthropology
Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology
European Virus Bioinformatics Center (EVBC)
Division of History
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