Long before COVID-19 swept over the globe, the Plague of Justinian gave rise to widespread upheaval as the opening chapter of the world’s first plague pandemic. From 541 to 750 C.E., the bubonic plague cast a shadow over much of Eurasia, from the grand Byzantine capital of Constantinople to rural villages across England.
A new study published in the journal Genes has zeroed in on genetic evidence of the bacterium that started it all, Yersinia pestis. Concealed in a mass grave site at the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan, traces of Y. pestis DNA were recovered in the teeth of 5 buried individuals.
With this evidence, researchers can now understand how the plague inundated the Byzantine Empire and set off one of the most harrowing episodes in all of history.
The First Plague Pandemic
The Plague of Justinian was the first plague pandemic to be historically recorded, believed to have killed somewhere between 25 million and 50 million people. It was named after Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, who ruled during the initial outbreak around 541 C.E. — it is even said that Justinian contracted the plague and recovered from it.
According to historical records, the plague emerged in the city of Pelusium in Egypt before spreading throughout the Mediterranean. Over the course of 200 years, the plague would flare up in different regions all across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East.
The root of the plague, Y. pestis, has been busy throughout history. It was the same bacterium behind the Black Death of the 14th century, and has even caused the occasional case of plague today. The bacterium is mostly found in small mammals, like rodents, and their fleas.
Genetic traces of Y. pestis related to the Plague of Justinian have previously been recovered in small Western European villages, but no evidence farther east within the Byzantine Empire has ever been encountered, until now.
Read More: Black Death Bacterium Evolved to be Less Aggressive to Kill Victims Slowly
Recovering the Plague From Buried Teeth
Researchers have finally come across direct evidence of Y. pestis within the former Byzantine Empire’s borders, using genome sequencing to recover DNA from eight teeth among 5 individuals.
“This discovery provides the long-sought definitive proof of Y. pestis at the epicenter of the Plague of Justinian,” said author Rays H. Y. Jiang, a professor of systems biology at the University of South Florida, in a statement. “Our findings provide the missing piece of that puzzle, offering the first direct genetic window into how this pandemic unfolded at the heart of the empire.”
The teeth were excavated from burial chambers beneath a former Roman hippodrome, which is a stadium where people watched events like chariot races. The researchers say that the arena had been repurposed as a mass grave around the mid-sixth to early seventh century to deal with mass mortality from the plague.
Through genomic analysis, the researchers found the plague victims shared nearly identical strains of Y. pestis, suggesting a rapid outbreak between 550 to 660 C.E.
Impact of Pandemics Throughout History
A companion study sorted through hundreds of ancient and modern Y. pestis genomes — including the ones found in Jerash — to show that the pathogen was circulating among human populations for millennia before the Plague of Justinian.
This study concluded that later plague pandemics repeatedly arose in multiple iterations from longstanding animal reservoirs rather than a single ancestral strain. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, didn’t start this same way. It instead resulted from a single spillover event and evolved mostly through human-to-human transmission.
The two studies not only shine a light on a dim period of early Medieval history, but also demonstrate how pandemics become such a danger to humans, even today.
Read More: Deadly Diseases That Plagued People in Ancient Times are Similar to Those of Today
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