DNA from plague victims’ teeth may unravel the origin of Black Death
Popular Science, June 15, 2022
A 14th-century pandemic may have started in Central Asia. New findings suggest that the ancestor of the Black Death strain showed up considerably later than previous work has indicated, said Vladimir Motin, a microbiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston who studies Y. pestis. Earlier studies suggested it caused local outbreaks in Asia for at least a century, he said. “Right now it’s a good hypothesis; is it true or not, I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s definitely an interesting question which we should take into consideration.”