A Central Asian cemetery holds clues to Europe’s bubonic plague.
DNA in teeth of three individuals from an ancient Central Asian cemetery where tombstone inscriptions say that they, as well as many others buried there, died in 1338 and 1339 from an unspecified “pestilence.
But the first archaeological and genetic clues to the Black Death’s place and time of birth come from Central Asia, Spyrou says. Excavations at two cemeteries in northern Kyrgyzstan almost 140 years ago revealed tombstones indicating that many people buried there in 1338 and 1339 had died of an unknown epidemic. The cemeteries were used from the mid-1200s to the mid-1300s, but tombstone inscriptions indicated that deaths spiked in 1338 and 1339.
Excavators of a cemetery in Kyrgyzstan, shown here during work that ran from 1885 to 1892, unearthed human skeletons that have now provided genetic clues to the origins of Europe’s Black Death.genome for two of three Central Asian individuals who died in 1338 or 1339 and whose teeth contained remnants of bacterial DNA.
The researchers also found that marmots and other rodents now living in the same region of Central Asia carry forms ofvariant that killed Central Asians in 1338 and 1339 may thus have emerged locally, the investigators suggest.
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