Researchers Find Origins of Largest Pandemic - Bubonic Plague AKA Black Death

Bubonic plague AKA Black Death killed anywhere from 10 to 200 million people in Eurasia and Africa in the 1300s.

The Bubonic Plague killed millions in the 1300s.

(Photo: iStock)

An international team of researchers may have traced the origins of the deadliest pandemic in mankind's recorded history - the bubonic plague AKA the Black Death.

The bubonic plague pandemic of the 1300s killed nearly 200 million people in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, spreading violently and rapidly from 1346 to 1353. It is the deadliest pandemic recorded.

The team of researchers led by Dr. Philip Slavin, a historian from the University of Stirling in Scotland, traced the bubonic plague's origins to central Asia in the 1300s. To be specific, Kyrgyzstan, Asia.

The team started its investigation by investigating a recorded spike in burials at two cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan towards the end of the 1330s.

The team scrutinized over 460 tombstones of deaths between 1248 and 1345, i.e., the years leading up to the bubonic plague's outbreak.

A photo of patients from the plague outbreak in Hong Kong. 

(Photo: iStock)

118 stones out of the ones the team studied were dated between 1338 and 1339 with inscriptions on the tombstones mentioning the word “mawtānā” as the cause of death.

According to Slavin, “mawtānā” is the Syriac term for "pestilence".

After this, the team extracted DNA from the teeth of seven skeletons and sent it to the University of Tübingen in Germany for analysis.

"Three of the seven skeletons tested positive for the Yersinia pestis bacterium which is responsible for the bubonic plague."

Dr Maria Spyrou, Researcher, University of Tübingen, Germany

A detailed scrutiny of the bacteria found in the skeletons' DNA revealed a direct link to the bacteria responsible for the bubonic plague. In fact, the bacterium found in these skeletons was a direct ancestor of the bacteria responsible for over half the recorded deaths from the bubonic plague.

While bubonic plague has reduced drastically, thanks to better hygiene and reduced contact with rats, the contemporary descendants of the bubonic plague virus still live in rats in the Kyrgyz region, the team said.