The bacterium Yersinia pestis (or plague bacillus) is the causative agent of plague. European scientists believe they have finally identified the origin of the bubonic plague epidemic that began in the mid-14th century and killed tens of millions of people in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Researchers from the University of Stirling in Scotland, the University of Tübingen in Germany, and the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems analyzed teeth from burials near Lake Issyk-Kul and concluded that the first outbreak of the plague occurred in what is now Kyrgyzstan in the 1330s.
The translation into English is The Plague is one of the greatest epidemiological catastrophes in human history. However, despite numerous studies conducted at various times, scientists have still not been able to determine the exact location of its epicenter. According to various sources, up to 60% of the population of the European continent fell victim to the epidemic.
Such masks – a symbol of the Black Death that has reached our days. The Issyk-Kul region caught the attention of scientists after they noticed a sharp increase in mortality in the area in 1338-39. According to Dr. Maria Spira of the University of Tübingen, the research group conducted an analysis of DNA from the remains of seven individuals. Special attention was given to the teeth because of the large number of blood vessels in the human mouth and the greater likelihood of detecting blood-borne pathogens, the scientists explained. They found traces of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis in the remains of three deceased people. “Our research answers one of the biggest and most exciting questions in history, providing insight into when and where the most infamous killer bacteria emerged,” said Philip Slavin, a historian at the University of Stirling. Scientists regret that their research is limited by a small amount of source material. They say that studying a larger number of remains in a wider area would provide a more complete picture of what happened in this part of Central Asia in the mid-14th century. But the results achieved by the scientific community are also considered a breakthrough in the study of this period of history. The researchers’ conclusions were published in the prestigious journal Nature under the title “The Black Death Source in the Central Regions of Eurasia in the 14th Century”.
From 2010 to 2015, 3248 cases of the disease were recorded worldwide. 584 of those who became ill died. Among humans, bubonic plague was known as the “Black Death” because of the blackening of various parts of the body, especially the hands and feet, as a result of the gangrene that often accompanied the disease.
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