The Source of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Central Eurasia

The Source of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Central EurasiaNatureSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/L9JFMA8T/tei

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2024-08-15-04:00

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Maria A.SpyrouLyazzatMusralinaGuido A.Gnecchi RusconeArthurKocherPier GiorgioBorboneValeri I.KhartanovichAlexandraBuzhilovaLeylaDjansugurovaKirsten I.BosDeniseKühnertWolfgangHaakPhilipSlavinJohannesKrauseThe Source of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Central Eurasiahttp://syriaca.org/cbss/L9JFMA8Thttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/L9JFMA8Thttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/L9JFMA8TNature6062022718-724The 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 consequences. 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 Kyrgyzstan. 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 individuals. 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. Spyrou, Maria A., Lyazzat Musralina, Guido A. Gnecchi Ruscone, Arthur Kocher, Pier Giorgio Borbone, Valeri I. Khartanovich, Alexandra Buzhilova, et al. “The Source of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Central Eurasia.” Nature 606 (2022): 718–24. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04800-3. Maria A. Spyrou et al., The Source of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Central Eurasia, Nature 606 (2022): 718–24, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04800-3.KirghiziaNestoriansSyriac influence [Central Asia]VII-XVIII CEXIV CEarchaeologyburialillnessnatural disastersplaguetombs