(Image source: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
BY LUKAS UDSTUEN
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Scientists have made quite the discovery after examining some ancient teeth. They looked at remains from victims of the Black Plague buried in London. The scientists are the first in history to reconstruct the genome of an ancient disease using only skeletal remains.
When the Black Plague swept through Europe during the 14th century it killed roughly half of the population. And CNN reports the recently constructed genome is not so genetically different from strains of the plague still around today. The network interviewed the author of the study who says...
“They’re almost identical … Even a mother and a child show more [genetic] differences than the ancient Black Death strain and the modern plague strain.”
Last year anthropologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz confirmed the Black Plague was caused by Yersinia pestis - a disease that kills an estimated 2,000 people each year. But the genetic similarities unearthed in the study don’t explain why the death toll is so low now. NPR talked with a biological anthropologist on the research team who notes...
“There is no smoking gun, so to speak, to say, 'Aha, we've found the one mutation which caused this tremendous virulence and now we know why it killed 50 million people.' We don't see that...”
The researchers suggested other factors beyond genetics to explain why the Black Death was so fatal. The New York Times reported “the deadliness of the black death may reflect the condition of its medieval victims.”
“The climate was cooling, heavy rains rotted out crops and caused famine, and the Hundred Years’ War began in 1337. People were probably already suffering from malnutrition and other diseases when the plague arrived like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse.”
It’s likely modern anti-biotics could have severely limited the death toll of the plague. Still, John Hatcher says our society is now much more inter-connected than it was in the past. That could mean bad news in the event of a similar epidemic.
"Paradoxically society was able to cope much better in the 14th century with deaths on this horrendous scale than we would be today. And this is primarily because people were to a degree self sufficient and independent. Whereas today we have such complex interconnections that deaths on anything like that scale would cause complete chaos."
Thomas Gilbert is one scientist who previously tried to find plague DNA from Black Death victims. He wasn’t able to do so but in an interview with NPR he says this new research looks very convincing.
“He says the insights that come from these studies will be of interest not only from a historical perspective, but also to help scientists understand how deadly epidemics have emerged in the past so that they can get ready for what might come in the future.”
According to CNN, the new research suggests “the Black Plague was the first time Yersinia pestis has infected humans. It’s possible an earlier plague of Justinian in 541 A.D. was caused by a different pathogen. It’s also possible it could have been caused by an extinct strain of Yersinia pestis.”
Transcript by Newsy.
