Ancient DNA Pinpoints Culprit Responsible for World's First Pandemic

Archaeology Magazine ^ | September 5, 2025 | editors / unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

The world's first pandemic, known as the Plague of Justinian after the sitting Byzantine emperor, killed an estimated 25 to 100 million people between a.d. 541 and 750... historical sources from the period suggest that it may have begun around Pelusium, Egypt, before spreading rapidly throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean world. According to a statement released by the University of South Florida (USF), researchers participated in an interdisciplinary study that has uncovered -- for the first time -- direct genomic evidence pinpointing the bacterium Yersinia pestis as the cause of the plague. The team sequenced genetic material from eight human teeth taken from individuals buried in a mid-sixth to early seventh-century a.d. mass grave beneath the former Roman hippodrome in Jerash, Jordan, a city just 200 miles from ancient Pelusium. The study determined that the plague victims carried nearly identical strains of Y. pestis, confirming for the first time that the microbe was present within the Byzantine Empire between a.d. 550 and 660. "For centuries, we've relied on written accounts describing a devastating disease, but lacked any hard biological evidence of plague's presence," said USF researcher Rays H.Y. Jiang. "Our findings provide the missing piece of that puzzle, offering the first direct genetic window into how this pandemic unfolded at the heart of the empire." Yersinia pestis was also responsible for causing the infamous Black Death, which may have wiped out as much as 50 percent of Europe's population in the fourteenth century. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Genes. To read about evidence of a virulent form of the bacterium that circulated as early as 1800 b.c., go to "Bronze Age PlagueBronze Age Plague," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2018.

[SunkenCiv]

The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and "furious follies," a "terrible worm in an iron cocoon."

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
by Barbara W. Tuchman (Part I) [Audiobook] | 9:09:24
RedBookNook | 4.47K subscribers | 5,391 views | October 2, 2024

00:27 .Foreword
23:38 .01 - "I Am the Sire de Coucy": The Dynasty
01:23:53 .02 - Born to Woe: The Century
02:36:44 .03 - Youth and Chivalry
03:37:38 .04 - War
04:37:04 .05 - "This Is the End of the World": The Black Death
06:17:49 .06 - The Battle of Poitiers
07:42:34 .07 - Decapitated France: The Bourgeois Rising and the Jacquerie

[SunkenCiv]

Part II:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEUP4jHG7NY

Part III:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib7zL33YKKY

[Thapsus_epiphany]

I understand, audio book is an easier format.

Don’t give up on the book, though.

Tuchman tells the story of the14th century in France, when France was the great power of Western Civilization. She writes the story of the 14th century through a larger than life real-life character, Engerand De Coucy.

His family in Northwest France built the largest castle tower ever built in Europe, possibly anywhere. The size of a modern day skyscraper.

The castle and donjon survived until about 100 years ago when the retreating Kaiser’s armies filled it with explosives and blew it up, out of spite.

The castle and tower dominated the skyline of Northwest France for over 500 years.

Tuchman’s scholarship is impeccable, one of the great historians of the 20th century.

All of her books are thoroughly researched and take years to write.

She spent 5 years in France researching “ A Distant Mirror”, examining ancient documents in the original French.

Truly an astonishing work.

Cheers….

[nagant]

You don’t want to count the rats at a dairy farm at night.

[Thapsus_epiphany]

* sic…

The tower survived 500 years, not 100 years.

Typo…