[HN Gopher] Ancient DNA traces origin of Black Death ___________________________________________________________________ Ancient DNA traces origin of Black Death Author : rntn Score : 27 points Date : 2022-06-15 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nature.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com) | INTPenis wrote: | Maybe it was just an outbreak of a much older disease?[1] | | 1. | https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/12/4900-yea... | marcodiego wrote: | lionkor wrote: | Sorry, not from the US; Is "Black" a racist term no matter the | context? | [deleted] | stevenjgarner wrote: | "Because most people who got the plague died, and many often | had blackened tissue due to gangrene, bubonic plague was | called the Black Death." [1] | | [1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21590-bubo | nic... | Enginerrrd wrote: | No. | aksss wrote: | TL;DR: earliest evidence of ancestor to Yersinia pestis found in | Kyrgyztan. Not saying that's the origin, just the earliest known | find of an ancestor so far. | | Condensed version: | | "People who died in a fourteenth-century outbreak in what is now | Kyrgyzstan were killed by strains of the plague-causing bacterium | Yersinia pestis that gave rise to the pathogens responsible | several years later for the Black Death, shows a study of ancient | genomes." | | "Other evidence puts the origins of the Black Death in this part | of Central Asia. Among modern strains of Y. pestis bacteria, | those sampled from marmots and other rodents in Kyrgyzstan, | Kazakhstan and Xinjiang in northwest China, surrounding the Tian | Shan mountain range, were most closely related to the Kara- | Djigach strain. 'We can't really say it's that village or that | valley, but it's likely that region,' says Krause." | | "[Miscellaneous scholar] is less sure of the study's conclusion | that the plague's 'big bang' occurred around the time of the | Kyrgyzstan deaths in 1338-39. Green has hypothesized, on the | basis of genetic evidence, that the thirteenth-century expansion | of the Mongol Empire catalysed the spread and diversification of | Y. pestis strains responsible for the later Black Death." | | "Where is Kyrgyzstan": | | https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kyrgyzstan/@36.2729637,68.... | [deleted] | hinkley wrote: | > held an unusually high number of tombstones dated to 1338 and | 1339, ten of which made explicit reference to a pestilence. | | > "When you have one or two years with excess mortality, it means | something funny is going on there," Slavin said at a press | briefing. | | When you have more than a couple of years of 'excess mortality' | the ratio of tombstones to deaths may also decline. That's why we | also look for mass graves. They can contain people nobody wants | to bury (eg, dead Vikings after a failed invasion) or people | nobody _can_ bury. | | An unusually high number in 1338 and 1339 may indicate a two year | plague, or that people gave up it 1340. | zeristor wrote: | So what was the Antoine plague then? | KSS42 wrote: | Likely smallpox. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-15 23:00 UTC)