(ORDO NEWS) — The Black Death (Black Sea) came to Europe about seven hundred years ago. This was the second plague pandemic, which claimed the most lives in 1346-1353. In a matter of years, a terrible disease was able to destroy a huge part of the world‘s population.
The Black Sea has caused the death of people who lived in the Middle East, Europe and North Africa. The pandemic raged in 1347-1352.
Then at least 25 million people died. The upper limit could be as high as 200 million, which is equal to 40% of the world’s population.
Despite the fact that in 1352 the disease began to decline, the plague still occasionally arose and provoked the death of huge cities.
Until the end of the 19th century, no one could name the cause of the Black Death, although at that time it claimed hundreds of millions of human lives.
In 1894, experts were able to detect the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which caused the development of a dangerous disease. The bacterium was carried by rats and got to people through fleas that fed on the blood of rodents.
Despite this, exactly how and when the transmission of the Black Death occurred remained a mystery. During the last study, the places where archaeological excavations were carried out in the 14th century in Central Asia were re-examined.
In Kyrgyzstan, two large burials were discovered. The tombstones said that the graves contained people who died in 1338 due to the plague. Scientists extracted DNA from the victims and soon the presence of the plague bacteria was recorded.
This suggests that Y. pestis was present in Central Asia even before it arrived in Europe. Additionally, the genome of the bacterium was studied to see if it was actually the original strain of the plague pathogen.
As it turned out, this was indeed the first strain that later provoked a pandemic. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the ancient type of bacteria has a lot in common with those strains that were found in the body of marmots living near the above archaeological site.
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