Ancient Teeth Have Unveiled New Details About The Bubonic Plague That Could Rewrite History

The Black Death was actually just the initial wave of a wider bubonic plague pandemic that lasted for almost 500 years. It was a remarkably consequential passage in the history of our species, so naturally experts have sought to understand it better. Yet that has proven to be easier said than done.

Even though the Black Death took place across a relatively short span of time — between the years 1347 and 1351 — its effects were extreme. The populations of Africa, Asia, and Europe were absolutely decimated. No other single pandemic or war has ever wiped out that many people, as a proportion of the total population, at least.

Naturally enough, contemporary historians and scientists have looked back at the Black Death with tremendous interest. It makes sense to learn all we can about this grim period of time, starting with its earliest moments. That begs the simple question: where did the plague begin? Well, the answer to that has proven elusive.

Debate has raged among experts for hundreds of years about the origins of the plague. But in June 2022 a group of researchers started to make headlines for the work they’ve been doing. These people say that they’ve figured it out — and they have the proof to back it up.

Thanks to modern research, we know quite a lot about the bubonic plague that the people affected by it during the Middle Ages never could have fathomed. For one thing, we understand the pandemic came about because of a bacterium known as Yersinia pestis. This thing was only identified centuries after the plague had taken place, when it was discovered by a Frenchman named Alexandre Yersin in the late 1800s.

Yersinia pestis can infect individuals easily because it’s airborne and transmissible via breathing. On top of that, creatures like rats and fleas can carry it, so a bite from them can be equally dangerous. That was a big problem in the Europe of the Middle Ages, as pests like these were everywhere.

The plague first emerged in Europe during the fall of 1347. A fleet of a dozen vessels arrived in Sicily, having started their journey sailing across the Black Sea. Aboard these ships were a bunch of dead and dying people, their bodies blotted by horrible, black spots.

It became clear something was badly wrong, so the vessels were commanded to leave — but not in time. The damage was done. The plague began to spread throughout the Sicilian population, and from there it moved further afield. It hit the French city of Marseilles, and the north-African city of Tunis. It found its way to other Italian cities, and even to places not on the continent, such as London. It wasn’t long before Europe was completely overwhelmed.

We know today that this is how pandemics work, but in those days they had no idea. It didn’t seem to make any sense, so mystical explanations began to emerge. According to the website History, a medical practitioner at time thought “instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit, escaping from the eyes of the sick man, strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick.”

The people of the time had no real idea what they were up against, but they knew it was bad. The symptoms, after all, were so severe. As a poet from the period named Giovanni Boccaccio described, “In men and women alike... at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits… waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.”

These “plague-boils,” as Boccaccio termed them, were nasty. They were filled with pus and blood, which would ooze. People would be stricken by aches, stomach issues, and fever. The plague affects the lymphatic system, which brings about swelling. The lungs and blood can be affected, and death can result swiftly.

The medical practitioners of the era didn’t really know how to handle the symptoms. Boils, for instance, might be lanced in really unhygienic conditions, which could ultimately make things far worse. Blood was withdrawn, and to similar effect. A lot of spiritual exercises were employed, too, like setting strong-smelling herbs alight.

One thing people did seem to rightly understand was that they could catch the plague from people already infected by it. That meant they did their best to steer clear of the afflicted, but that was problematic in itself. It meant medical practitioners would sometimes refuse to help sufferers. Stores refused to open. Society, in short, was upturned.

The notion of “quarantining” originates from the period of the Black Death. People realized that staying away from infected people was necessary, so they practiced social distancing — even if they didn’t use that exact term. The idea of isolating is obviously something that’s stuck around right up to the present day.

Lots of people who lived in urban centers upped sticks and moved to rural areas, hoping to escape infection. That didn’t always work, as farm animals could also carry the disease. As a matter of fact, sheep mortality at the time was so high that the wool trade collapsed in Europe.

The Black Death was just a single wave of the plague pandemic, and it faded within a few years. By that point, a tremendous amount of damage had been done and so many people had died. But it wasn’t over. This wave had passed, but the wider pandemic would continue for almost half a millennium.

Throughout those 500 years or so, outbreaks would suddenly emerge to afflict people once again. But over time, more modern understandings of the importance of maintaining sanitary conditions developed and the bubonic plague became less of a problem. Having said that, it still exists today; according to the World Health Organization, on average between 1,000 and 3,000 people a year are still affected by it.

The bubonic plague has shaped the course of human history to a tremendous extent, yet we don’t know everything about it. Its origins, for one thing, are a mystery. We have stories and theories about how it ended up in Europe, but where did it come from originally? That’s been a question on experts’ lips for centuries.

Researchers have come up with a bunch of theories over the years. Some people have suggested the plague came from central Asia, perhaps China or Mongolia. Other experts have suggested the north of Iraq, while others still have posited various regions of Russia. India has been suggested, as has space itself. According to at least one theorist, some sort of cosmic occurrence may have led the virus to ravage humanity.

As of June 2022 though, one particular theory has emerged as perhaps the most plausible. Experts from the Max Planck Institute, the University of Tubingen, and the University of Stirling have published their thoughts on this question — and they’re quite convincing. They claim to have found tangible proof that the bubonic plague emerged in the north of Kyrgyzstan.

So, why does Kyrgyzstan — which is bordered by China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan — seem like the right place? Well, the researchers had heard about a certain cemetery here that seemed interesting. Many of the tombstones here were dated to the time just before the Black Death, and records suggested “pestilence” was the cause of many of these people’s demise.

All of this sounded quite like the cemetery was filled with plague victims. So, the researchers traveled to the old graveyard and took DNA samples from the teeth of some of the bodies laid to rest there. Subsequent analysis revealed that these people had, indeed, been afflicted by Yersinia pestis.

Dr. Philip Slavin of the University of Stirling was one of the researchers involved in making this vital discovery. In a statement, he said, “Our study puts to rest one of the biggest and most fascinating questions in history and determines when and where the single most notorious and infamous killer of humans began.”

Dr. Slavin explained, “We studied specimens from two cemeteries near Lake Issyk Kul in what is now north Kyrgyzstan after identifying a huge spike in the number of burials there in 1338 and 1339.” The expert explained how they had learned that roughly 30 skeletons had been exhumed from these graveyards a little over a century earlier. They were able to track down these bones and carry out DNA analysis on the teeth that formed part of these remains. The academic revealed, “To my astonishment, this confirmed the beginning of the second plague pandemic.”

It can’t have been an easy task for Dr. Slavin and his colleagues. It wasn’t just a case of analyzing the DNA, as they also had to trawl through centuries-old records to try and identify the bodies exhumed from the cemetery. They had the tombstones to help with the task, but these were inscribed in Syriac, which needed to be translated.

Another person involved in this research was Dr. Maria Spyrou, who also spoke about the work in a statement. She said, “Despite the risk of environmental contamination and no guarantee that the bacteria would have been able to be preserved, we were able to sequence aDNA taken from seven individuals unearthed from two of these cemeteries... Most excitingly, we found aDNA of the plague bacterium in three individuals.”

Now, we can’t say that the plague definitely emerged from this specific area where the bodies had come from. But it does seem reasonable to suggest that the broader region around it was the place. But how did the disease actually spread? Well, the researchers have thoughts on this, too.

The experts think the bubonic plague may have afflicted a rodent population in the area. We usually think of rats when we consider the plague, but in this case we’re actually talking about marmots. It’s these creatures, not rats, that they think passed the dreadful infection onto human populations.

If correct, the theories put forth from the researchers will bring an end to a debate that’s raged for centuries. People have pondered the origins of the bubonic plague for a long time, and it seems we may now have figured it out. Hopefully, this will encourage experts in other fields to stick with tricky, lingering questions. Answers, it seems, are out there.