Scientists excavating the 700-year-old tombs of Kyrgyzstan, as a result of their research, identified the source of the black plague, which killed 75 to 200 million people. The person struggling with the coronavirus epidemic today had to fight many diseases before. The most devastating of these was the black plague, which peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351 and is thought to have killed 75-200 million people in North Africa. Scientists have made very important determinations about the origin and mystery of the black plague.
Source Not Found
According to the news in The Guardian, tens of millions of people lost their lives as a result of the virus, which is also called the black death, spread on trade routes and surrounded the continents. Despite intense efforts to reveal the source of the epidemic, the lack of conclusive evidence left the questions of why and how it emerged unanswered.
They Found the Ancestor of the Plague
Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “We found not only the ancestor of the Black Death, but also the ancestor of most of the plague species that circulate in the world today,” said Johannes Krause. aforementioned. “We have succeeded in ending the age-old debate about the origin of the Black Death,” said Philip Slavin, a scientist at the University of Stirling in Scotland. The last of the studies on the source of the epidemic was published in the journal Nature.
700-Year-Old Grave Excavated
Slavin said they found a clue in an 1890 study of sudden deaths in northern Kyrgyzstan in 1338-39. Following the narrative about 7-8 years before the Black Death, Slavin gathered a team of experts studying ancient DNA and traveled to the area. A full analysis of the bacterium’s genome revealed it was a direct ancestor of the species that caused the Black Death in Europe eight years later. As a result, he found that it was probably the cause of death for more than half of the population on the next continent. The closest living relative of the strain was found in rodents from the same region, the scientists said.
Less Contact Reduced Mortality Rates
While humans were infected with bubonic plague, better hygiene and less contact with rat fleas, which can transmit the infection to humans, prevented further deadly plague outbreaks.
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