The origin of the deadly Black Death may finally be revealed

The pandemic that wiped out a third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages will start in Central Asia, more precisely in Kyrgyzstan.

Pandemics are not new. In the middle of the 14th century, the Black Death devastated the Middle Ages, being one of the deadliest pandemics, especially in Europe, where it is estimated that a third of the population was destroyed, and in Western Asia. For centuries, its origin has been a mystery that has puzzled scientists, but perhaps the mystery has finally come to an end.

new study published in Nature may have deciphered where the disease came from. The key is in the group 30 skeletons which were recovered from the graves in the Chui valley in northern Kyrgyzstan in the late 1880s, 130 years ago.

The plague was caused by bacteria Yersinia plague and scientists have been looking for its genome on the European continent for a long time. In a previous study where they compared genomes with the remains of victims of the disease, researchers Maria Spirow and Johannes Krause found that the second wave of the pandemic began in a village in Russia. Scientific Alert.

Other teams of scientists also said they found the first victim of the plague, who died in Latvia from infection with a less contagious variety of the bacterium. thousands of years before the pandemic began.

A new study by Spyrow and Krause now suggests that the plague originated in Central Asia, due to DNA evidence from the bodies of seven people taken from graves whose graves contained vague details about an unknown plague. Thus, the disease originates in Kyrgyzstan in the 1330s.

Spyrow adds that the team decided to analyze the teeth as they are. many blood vessels, giving researchers “an excellent opportunity to detect blood-borne pathogens that may have killed people.” Scientists have sequenced the genetic material of the teeth and compared it with modern and historical Y. pestis genomes.

Traces of ancient plague bacterium DNA were found in the teeth of three of the seven skeletons. The inscription of the date on the tombstones thus shows the exact year of these first deaths caused by the Black Death – 1338.

“Our research tackles one of the biggest and most fascinating questions in history and determines when and where most infamous and infamous killer human,” said Philip Slavin, a historian at the University of Stirling.

However, the study has some limitations such as small sample size. Archaeological finds are also usually inconclusive, and things could change if the remains of more plague victims who died even earlier are found.