Looks like the Black Death mystery has finally been solved!
Living in what scientists are now calling “the age of pandemics,” we’ve all seen how difficult it is to track down the authentic source of an outbreak, such as the Covid-19. Two years down the line, studies show that the coronavirus originated in China. But which animal hosted the virus? Was it a laboratory-made disease or a natural occurrence? These questions continue to be points of global debate.
After researching Covid-19 and other preceding pandemics, you must have heard the term Black Death. Till now, it’s considered the world’s most life-threatening plague, passed on from rodents to humans. Sources cite that this pandemic originated in the Middle Ages and rendered more than half of Europe’s population dead within a span of seven years.
Fast forward to the present, scientists may have finally solved the mystery of its source, after ages of investigation. Research conducted by a team of German scientists indicates that it was a bacterial disease that originated in central Eurasia (modern-day Kyrgyzstan), as revealed recently in the British scientific journal Nature.
What has the recent study on Black Death revealed?
According to records, environmental historian Philip Slavin (associated with UK’s University of Stirling) unearthed two 14th century graves named Kara-Djigach and Burana, a few years back. Both the graves are situated in present-day Kyrgyzstan near Lake Issyk-Kul, a region noted for mass death during medieval times. He suspected that they held clues to Black Death’s mysterious origins. Why? Because the site was full of graves from the exact time of Black Death.
To solve the mystery, Slavin consulted with Johannes Krause, a German palaeogeneticist, and Maria Spyrou, a German archaeogeneticist and team leader. After a thorough research of the human remains (especially the teeth of seven individuals), the team discovered that the pathogen responsible for the plague is a bacterium named Yersinia pestis. This was revealed through the process of genome sequencing. Interestingly, this DNA sequencing was also able to determine the exact year of origin, 1338.
So far, historical records had suggested that this deadly bubonic plague, that mainly broke loose between 1346 and 1353, had emerged from western Eurasia, more precisely, Caffa. That’s because this area had recorded the first ever instances of this plague. Apart from this, the Caucasus and other places in and around Central Asia had also been suspected as potential epicentres. In fact, China, which is currently home to several modern-day Yersinia pestis strains, was also presumed to be the origin place of Black Death. However, what exactly was responsible for it or where it was born, remained a mystery, until recently.
How did Black Death get its sinister name?
You may have wondered how Black Death got its name. That's because most people who suffered from this deadly disease met a fatal end. Afflicted people also ended up with blackened tissue, after developing a severe side-effect of gangrene. At the time this plague was rampant, the expression ‘black death’ was occasionally used to refer to deadly diseases. Homer, in the famous epic, Odyssey, had used the phrase “full of Black Death” to describe a contemporary deadly disease called Scylla. But it wasn’t until 1908 that the term Black Death had been popularised with respect to the medieval plague. Historian Cardinal Francis Aidan Gasquet discovered that the term first appeared in a 1631 history book by Danish writer J. I. Pontanus: “Commonly and from its effects, they called it the black death.”
Interestingly, Black Death was also called Black Plague. However, its most common alternative is Great Mortality, derived from the medieval Latin term ‘magna mortalitas.’