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

Article

关键词: YERSINIA-PESTIS;    SALMONELLA-ENTERICA;    PLAGUE;    GENOME;    EPIDEMIC;    SEQUENCE;    FRAMEWORK;    PATTERNS;    GENETICS;    VICTIMS;   

DOI  :  10.1038/s41586-022-04800-3

来源: SCIE

【 摘 要 】

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.

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