Ancient bacterial DNA hints Europe’s Black Death started in Central Asia
Archaeological and genetic data from a 1330s graveyard point to the bubonic plague’s origin
By Bruce Bower
Although best known as a plague that killed millions of Europeans from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death originated about a decade earlier in Central Asia, a new study suggests.
A strain of the plague-causing Yersinia pestis bacterium that killed people in what’s now Kyrgyzstan in 1338 and 1339 was a common ancestor of four Y. pestis strains previously linked to the deadly European outbreak, say archaeogeneticist Maria Spyrou of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany and colleagues.