Between 1346 and 1353, Eurasia experienced an unprecedented outbreak of plague: up to 60 percent of the population died within years from the disease, which subsequently developed into a pandemic and lasted into the early 19th century. Where the disease came from is still a mystery to experts today. An international team led by Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and Maria Spyrou from the University of Tübingen now wants to have solved the problem. Using a mixture of archaeological, historical and genetic analyses, the scientists were able to trace the origin of the eruption into the Tienshan Mountains in present-day Kyrgyzstan. They report on their results in the journal »Nature«.
The Tienshan Mountains, more precisely an area near Lake Issyk-Kul, has long been discussed as the place of origin of the Black Death. During excavations almost 140 years ago, archaeologists discovered tombstones whose inscriptions indicate that an unusual number of people died in 1338 and 1339 from an unknown epidemic, a “pestilence”. The theory that the plague could have originated in Central Asia has since competed with another theory that assumes its origin in East Asia, in China.
In order to investigate the Kyrgyzstan thesis, the group led by Krause and Spyrou examined the remains of the dead at Lake Issyk-Kul in more detail. Using genetic analysis, she was able to identify the DNA of the bacterium in the finds Yersinia pestis prove: The local epidemic was in all probability actually the plague.
© AS Leybin, August 1886 (detail)
Gravestone with inscription from the Chu Valley region in Kyrgyzstan | The translation reads something like: »In the year 1649 [= 1338 n. Chr.], in the year of the tiger. This is the tomb of the devotee Sanmaq. [Er] died of the plague.”
Further research also revealed that the bacteria found at Lake Issykkul appears to be a strain that is at the nexus of a huge diversification event commonly associated with the Black Death outbreak. “Today we find modern tribes that are most closely related to the ancient tribe in plague reservoirs around the Tienshan Mountains, very close to where this ancient tribe was found,” explains Krause in a press release. A typical reservoir of this kind is formed by wild rodents. “So the ancestor of the Black Death appears to have originated in Central Asia.”