By: Alice Su

Researchers Wolfgang Haak, Johannes Kraus, and Philip Slavin led an investigation regarding the Black Death, causing the discovery that a small village in Kyrgyzstan experienced the plague before it came to Europe. The Black Death was one of the deadliest epidemics in history and killed sixty percent of Eurasia. The disease originated near the western border of China and moved along trade routes to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Symptoms of the plague are black spots and swelling in the groin or under the armpit area. Yersinia pestis, a bacterium, is usually the cause, carried by the fleas of rodents. However, was it truly Y. Pestis that caused this epidemic?

Not many studies cover the Black Death. Monica H. Green, an independent scholar, and medical historian, remembers visiting a paleontologist investigating leprosy and asking when they would start on the Black Death. According to the New York Times, they responded that the plague would be too troublesome to study, as it killed victims too quickly to leave traces on bones.

However, a decade ago, Haak, Kraus, and Slavin explored London for plague graves. There, they learned that plague bacteria DNA could be found in the teeth of skeletons. Since then, they have observed the genetic material of many plague victims, and as they went along, they constructed a family tree for the plague bacteria variants. Suddenly, all at once, four branches of variants erupted from just a trunk. They called this the big bang, and it became a mission for them to find the source.

They found their answers at Issykkul, Kyrgyzstan, in two Christian graveyards. Some of the tomb inhabitants were labeled to have died of “pestilence” in 1338, seven or eight years before the Black Death arrived in Europe. As stated in the New York Times, Dr. Slavin added, “We can’t ask for much more than having tombstones with the year.”

The group also discovered that it was marmots that spread the plague to them. So, they tested the current marmots in the area and found fleas that carry a type of Y. Pestis that seems directly descended from the ancestral strain. This could’ve been the start of the big bang, the group theorized. If so, that would mean the big bang happened before the Black Death in Eurasia and was spread due to trade, not a centuries-old military activity. Dr. Green, according to the New York Times, said, “Stay tuned,” and added that she had expectations that more information would be revealed later.