News Snapshot:
The Black Death, a plague that killed 60% of people in western Eurasia from about 1346 to 1353, likely originated in the Tian Shan mountains of Central Asia, new research suggests. Scientists recover two genomes of an ancient strain of ersinia pestis, a bacterium that causes plague, from human remains buried in two 14th-century cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan. The strain is the ancestor of the microbes that cause the Black Death. “Not only has the origins of the Black Death been one of the most widely debated topics in medieval history, but I may not exaggerate if I say that it...
