Black death began in Central Asia, DNA analysis reveals

“I was almost 100 percent sure it was the beginning of Black Death,” Slavin said. Chemistry magazine

Currently, DNA research has confirmed his suspicions. Genetics extracted from the seven bodies indicate that they were infected Yersinia pestis, The bacterium that caused the greatest infectious disease catastrophe in human history. The strain launched a flood of death that would devastate the human population for the next 500 years. The plague first reached the United States in 1900, killing 119 people during the outbreak in San Francisco.

In a study published in the Science Journal on Wednesday NatureSlavin and a team of international researchers claim that Central Asia provides historical evidence that late medieval bubonic plague was actually the place where it began.

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“Our research rests one of the biggest and most fascinating questions in history and determines when and where the most notorious and infamous human murderers began,” Slavin said. I am. statement..

Historians said that when he learned of the tombs of Kyrgyzstan, a country north of Afghanistan, he was always fascinated by the plague and began to wonder about its origins. The ancient cemetery was discovered by Russian researchers in the 1880s. The bodies of 30 people were moved to the Peter Adult Anthropology and Ethnological Museum in St. Petersburg.

“There is a risk of environmental pollution and there is no guarantee that the bacteria have been preserved, but we were able to sequence aDNA (ancient DNA) from seven individuals excavated from two of these graveyards. “One of the authors of the study said. In her statement, Maria Spiro of the University of Tubingen. “The most exciting thing was that Yersinia pestis aDNA was found in three individuals.”

The plague first struck Europe in 1347 from a ship sailing in the Mediterranean after pre-appearing around the Black Sea. It spread rapidly and killed an estimated 60 percent of people in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It has devastated people around the world for centuries, until scientists discovered that rat-born fleas were the cause of the spread of bacteria.

Originally known as plague or plague, people began to call it plague in the 1750s, primarily because many victims showed an organization that was blackened by gangrene. The disease causes the lymph nodes, or bubo, which is the origin of the term “bubonic plague,” to swell and ooze pus. Most infected people have died.

The outbreak of the 14th century is remembered today as the second plague pandemic following another deadly disaster, the Great Famine of 1315-1317. The first plague outbreak occurred between 541 and 767 and is believed to have been an early form of bacteria.

Researchers and historians have hypothesized the origins of the second pandemic since its inception. Some believed that it started in China and moved west with the invasion of the Mongol Empire at about the same time. But this new evidence challenges the theory.

In 2011, scientists Yersinia pestis From two bodies found in a burial pit in London. Using computer programs, they were able to determine the evolution of bacteria from previous versions dating back 5,000 years.

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“Like COVID, plague is an emerging infectious disease, the beginning of a pandemic that lasted about 500 years,” said another author of the study, Johannes Klaus of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. It states as follows. statement. “It’s very important to understand what actually happened.”

The plague strain eventually evolved into a less lethal variety. Surprisingly, the research team discovered wild rodent bacteria that are still traversing the terrain near the Sanmaq tomb in Kyrgyzstan.

“What’s really remarkable is that rodents living in the area today have living relatives closest to the Big Bang strain (of Yersinia pestis),” Klaus said at a press conference. “We have actually found most of the plague stocks that are prevalent in the world today, not just the ancestors of plague.”