The source of the Black Death in fourteenth-century central Eurasia

Maria A. Spyrou (), Lyazzat Musralina, Guido A. Gnecchi Ruscone, Arthur Kocher, Pier-Giorgio Borbone, Valeri I. Khartanovich, Alexandra Buzhilova, Leyla Djansugurova, Kirsten I. Bos, Denise Kühnert, Wolfgang Haak, Philip Slavin () and Johannes Krause ()
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Maria A. Spyrou: Institute for Archaeological Sciences, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen
Lyazzat Musralina: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Guido A. Gnecchi Ruscone: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Arthur Kocher: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Pier-Giorgio Borbone: University of Pisa
Valeri I. Khartanovich: Kunstkamera, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences
Alexandra Buzhilova: Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Lomonosov Moscow State University
Leyla Djansugurova: Institute of Genetics and Physiology
Kirsten I. Bos: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Denise Kühnert: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Wolfgang Haak: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Philip Slavin: University of Stirling
Johannes Krause: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Nature, 2022, vol. 606, issue 7915, 718-724

Abstract: Abstract The 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 consequences1,2. 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 Kyrgyzstan1,3–9. 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 individuals9. 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.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04800-3

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