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

• Published in: Nature (London) Vol. 606; no. 7915; pp. 718 - 724
• Main Authors: Spyrou, Maria A., Musralina, Lyazzat, Gnecchi Ruscone, Guido A., Kocher, Arthur, Borbone, Pier-Giorgio, Khartanovich, Valeri I., Buzhilova, Alexandra, Djansugurova, Leyla, Bos, Kirsten I., Kühnert, Denise, Haak, Wolfgang, Slavin, Philip, Krause, Johannes
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 23.06.2022; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 14th century; 45; 45/47; 631/181/2474; 631/181/27; 631/326/421; Archaeology; Archives & records; Bubonic plague; Cemeteries; Death; DNA, Ancient - analysis; DNA, Bacterial - analysis; Epidemics; Genomes; History, Medieval; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Infectious diseases; Inscriptions; Kyrgyzstan - epidemiology; Life Sciences; Mortality; multidisciplinary; Pandemics; Pandemics - history; Pathogens; Phylogeny; Plague - epidemiology; Plague - history; Plague - microbiology; Plasmids; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Tombstones; Yersinia pestis - classification; Yersinia pestis - pathogenicity; Kyrgyzstan; Eurasia; Lake Issyk-Kul
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04800-3

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 consequences 1 , 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 Kyrgyzstan 1 , 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 individuals 9 . 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.