The black death has begun in 1338 in What is Kyrgyzstan now? new research suggests.
An outbreak of bubonic plague devastated world between 1346 and 1353 and is the most deadly pandemic fixed in human history causing deaths of up up to 200 million people.
bubonic plague is caused bacterium Yersinia plague and is spread by fleas, but can also take on a secondary form when it spreads from person to person via drops in in air.
In 1347 he first entered the Mediterranean via ships carrying cargo from the territories of Golden Horde in Black Sea.
deadly The disease then spread throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, stating that up up to 60 percent of in population in massive outbreak that earned this is the Black Death.
first wave further extended in the 500-year long pandemic known as second plague pandemic that lasted until the early 19th century. century.
origins of in second the plague pandemic was the subject of debate. One of the most popular theories supported his source in East Asia in particular in China.
However, the only available archaeological finds have so far come from Central Asia, not far from Lake Issyk-Kul, in What is Kyrgyzstan now?
finds show that the epidemic devastated the local trading community in 1338 and 1339.
excavations that took place almost 140 years ago, tombstones were discovered, indicating that people died in those years of en unknown epidemics or plagues.
Since they were first found, tombstones – with inscriptions in Syrian language – were the cornerstone of controversy among scholars regarding their relationship to the Black Death in Europe.
For research international team of researchers analyzed ancient Human DNA remains as well as historical and archaeological items from two sites that were found contain inscriptions about the “plague”.
teams first results were very encouraging, since the DNA of the plague bacterium, Y. pestiswas identified in faces with in year 1338 inscribed on their headstones.
Study senior by Dr. Phil Slavin, Fellow professor in history in university of Sterling in Scotland, said: “At last we could show what the epidemic mentioned on tombstones were indeed caused from the plague.”
Plague skeletons found
Scholars have previously linked the initiation of the Black Death with massive diversification of plague strains, the so-called Big Bang of crazy variety.
But the exact date of this is event could not be accurately estimated, and was thought to have occurred sometime between the 10th and 14th centuries.
research team now put together complete ancient plague genome from Kyrgyzstan and studied how they may relate with big Bang” event.
Lead Author Dr. Maria Spirow, of university of Tübingen, Germany, said: “We found what ancient strains from Kyrgyzstan are located exactly at the node of this massive diversification event.
“In other words, we found the original strain of the Black Death, and we even know its exact date.
She explained that the plague is not a disease of people; the bacterium survives in wild rodent populations around world, in so-called plague reservoirs.
ancient Central Asian strain, which caused the epidemic of 1338-39 around Lake Issyk-Kul must have originated from one such a reservoir, the researchers say.
Co-senior author Professor Johannes Krause added: “We found that modern strains are most closely related to ancient tension today found in plague reservoirs around the Tien Shan mountains, so very close to where ancient tension was found”.
professor Krause, director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary anthropology in Germany, added: “This points to origin of Ancestor of the Black Death in Central Asia.”
Findings have been published in Magazine Nature.
SWNS
