GROUND ZERO! After 600 Years, The Origins Of The Black Death Epidemic Unearthed

Across the 1300s, the bubonic plague, popularly known as the Black Death, devastated somewhere around 10 to 200 million people in Eurasia and Africa.

In 1347, the plague first entered the Mediterranean via trade ships transporting goods from the lands of the Golden Horde in the Black Sea. The illness then circulated across Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa claiming up to 60 percent of the population in a large-scale outbreak known as the Black Death. This first wave further extended into a 500- year-long epidemic, the so-called Second Plague Pandemic, which lasted until the early 19th century.

The origins of the Second Plague Pandemic have long been argued. One of the most popular propositions has supported its source in East Asia, specifically in China. On the contrary, the only so-far available archaeological findings come from Central Asia, close to Lake Issyk Kul, in what’s now Kyrgyzstan. These findings show that an epidemic devastated a native trading community in the years 1338 and 1339. Specifically, excavations that took place nearly 140 years ago revealed headstones indicating that individuals died in those times of an unknown epidemic or” pestilence.” Since their first discovery, the headstones inscribed in the Syriac language, have been a foundation of dispute among pundits regarding their applicability to the Black Death of Europe.

An international team of researchers may have traced the origins of the deadliest pandemic in mankind’s recorded history and made an elaborate inspection of the bacteria found in the skeletons’ DNA resulting in the direct link to the bacteria responsible for the bubonic plague. In fact, the bacterium found in these skeletons was a direct ancestor of the bacteria responsible for over half the recorded deaths from the bubonic plague.

While bubonic plague has degraded drastically, better hygiene and reduced contact with rats resulted in a stable and suitable environment, the contemporary descendants of the bubonic plague virus still live in rats in the Kyrgyz region, the team stated.

Image credits : Getty Images

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