Black Death origin mystery solved after 675 years, researchers say

CBS ^ | JUNE 15, 2022 / 11:52 AM | Staff

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

The Black Plague?? Isn’t that racist?

[SES1066]

YET no mention about the “Plague of Justinian” (541-49) that is also attributed to Yersinia pestis with the same rough origin geography but a 20% fatality rate in the cities. Due to the diminished travel in western Europe, its main effects were Byzantine / Eastern Roman Empire, the Sasanian Empire (Persia) and the Mediterranean trading routes that led to both northern Europe and south into Arabia.

A historical cusp deriving from this is the explosion of conquering Islam in the next century out of interior Arabia. With both Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia weak from this plague and centuries of incessant wars, neither was strong enough to resist that tide. By 651, Persia was fully conquered and, in that same century, Byzantium lost almost everything south of Anatolia to all of North Africa.

[Paal Gulli]

"... "Data from far more individuals, times and regions... would really help clarify what the data presented here really means,..."

So the mystery isn't all that solved, is it?

[nicollo]

Everyone knows it was bats. Or pangolins.

(whatever those are)

[Red Badger]

Only in the USA...................

[Red Badger]

Armored anteaters.....................

[Red Badger]

https://search.brave.com/images?q=pangolins

[SunkenCiv]

Related topics from the YP keyword below.

• Long list: How the black rat colonized Europe in the Roman and Medieval periods [05/07/2022]

  ---

• A 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer already plagued by Yersinia pestis (Yersinia pestis is discovered in a 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer from Latvia) [06/30/2021]
• How did the plague reshape Bronze Age Europe? [05/20/2020]
• Origins Of The Black Death Traced Back To China, Gene Sequencing Has Revealed; A Plague That Killed Over a Third of Europe's Population [02/27/2020]
• Plague in humans 'twice as old' but didn't begin as flea-borne, ancient DNA reveals [07/28/2019]
• Did a new form of plague destroy Europe's Stone Age societies? [06/13/2019]
• Oldest Bubonic Plague Genome Decoded [06/11/2018]
• Black Death may have been lurking for centuries: DNA of plague victims in France backs up theory... [01/23/2016]
• In Ancient DNA, Evidence of Plague Much Earlier Than Previously Known [11/06/2015]
• Plague Infected Humans Much Earlier Than Previously Thought [10/24/2015]
• Is Ebola the Same Virus as the Black Death? Historical Similarities are Striking [10/14/2014]
• Study of ancient and modern plagues finds common features [11/21/2008]
• Plague Victims Discovered After 1500 Years (Justinian) [04/10/2008]
• Bubonic Plague Traced To Ancient Egypt (Black Death) [03/11/2004]

[SunkenCiv]

[I set the time index to skip the intro] James Howard-Johnston (University of Oxford)- The Last Great War of Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2021). 1st Online Edinburgh Byzantine Book Festival, 5-7 February, 2021. Chaired by: Yannis Stouraitis, University of Edinburgh. Organised by: Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, University of Edinburgh.

James Howard-Johnston - The Last Great War of Antiquity
February 17, 2021 | Online Edinburgh Byzantine Book Festival

[SES1066]

Interesting and, pardon me for smiling, but for the news of the demise of the last outlet of the Howard Johnson chain to coincide with this erudite professor that bears such a similar family name, ...

Thanks for the posting!

[colorado tanker]

My concern is the next cool period may usher in the Big One, the descent into the next Ice Age. Glad I won’t live to see it.

[Tell It Right]

I agree. The trend is each cool period is worse than the prior. The next one will probably be cooler than the frigid cold that Hillary is to Bill.

[colorado tanker]

That’s colder than a witch’s . . . wait a minute, Hillary is a witch!

[SunkenCiv]

There’s a reporter who covers astronomy news that has an amusingly apropos name, Michelle Starr.

[SunkenCiv]

[snip] In 1338 or 1339 “Bačaq, a faithful woman” in her 40s who stood just four feet, eight inches, died and was buried in the Kara-Djigach cemetery, about seven miles outside Bishkek, the capital of what is now Kyrgyzstan. Her tombstone was inscribed in Syriac, an Aramaic dialect. She was one of 114 people buried there during those two years—who accounted for one quarter of all the cemetery’s burials while it was in operation from 1245 to 1345. Bačaq’s tombstone does not mention a cause of death, but other 1338–1339 tombstones do: mawtānā, or pestilence. Today it is called plague. [/snip]

Ancient Women’s Teeth Reveal Origins of 14th-Century Black Death
A medieval cemetery yields DNA evidence of the deadly pandemic bacterium’s Central Asian ancestor
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-women-rsquo-s-teeth-reveal-origins-of-14-century-black-death/

[wildbill]

You might also read Tales from the Decameron written in 1351. It is the story of 10 “elites” of the day practicing social distancing by isolating themselves in a villa during the 1348 plague in Italy.

They pass the time telling each other short stories about life , love, and the plague. I believe it is the only work of art about the Black Death that was written contemporaneously. I was a voracious reader at 10-12 and somehow came across it in a libaray.