DNA analysis reveals source of Black Death – CTV

June 16, 2022

Tombstones in what’s now Kyrgyzstan have revealed tantalizing details about the origins of the Black Death, the world’s most devastating plague outbreak that is estimated to have killed half of Europe’s population in the space of seven years during the Middle Ages.

The source of that pandemic has been debated by historians for centuries, but the inscribed tombstones — some of which referred to a mysterious pestilence — and genetic material from bodies exhumed from two grave sites that date back to the 13th century have provided some concrete answers to this long-standing question.

Researchers first excavated the burial sites in the 1880s. The tombstone inscriptions, written in the Syriac language, were painstakingly reexamined in 2017 by historian Phil Slavin, an associate professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He noticed that of the 467 burials that were precisely dated, a disproportionate number — 118 — were from just two years: 1338 and 1339. It’s a revelation he described as “astonishing.”

Read more: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/dna-analysis-reveals-source-of-black-death-1.5949439