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S22E10: Chasing the Plague | Clip

Could This Be the Black Death’s Earliest Victim?

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A spike in gravestones from 1338 in Kyrgyzstan led historian Philip Slavin to theorize that the Black Death may have begun years before it swept through Europe. Inscriptions mentioning “pestilence” begs the question: were these the earliest known victims of the plague?

TRANSCRIPT

-An increase in the number o headstones in one specific year caught Philip's attention.

-Then I just realized that there was one year when you had a remarkable spike in the number of annually chiseled headstones.

The year 1338, 1339 we have this remarkable spike.

-These headstones were dated almost a full decade before this wave of the Black death ravaged Europe.

-I got even more excited when I realized that there were several of those headstones.

The ten headstones were specifically mentioning mawtn or pestilence as the cause of the death of these people.

I say: Well.

Wow.

That must be it.

That must be really, really it.

So, I got really, really, really excited.

-Philip had identified what he believed could be Black Death Patient Zero The earliest known victim of the 14th century Black Death pandemic.

But to be certain that this pestilence was actually the Black Death, he would require scientific proof in the form of plague victims' DNA.

The graves that these ancient headstones had marked were excavated more than a century ago.

But amazingly, the skeletons were still in storage and available for scientific analysis.

-During the excavations, there were 88 graves opened at Kara-Djigach.

And those graves contained 94 skeletons.

Now, some of those skeletons were luckily buried in those graves that ar associated with the plague years And thankfully, some of those skulls were actually taken and were sent to Saint Petersburg.

That's how they ended up there.

At a later stage, they were transferred to the Kunstkamera Museum.

-And then, Philip experienced an even more remarkable coincidence.

-Phil Slavin, who gave a talk at our institute, we talked about historical analysis that he did on gravestones from a cemetery from Kyrgyzstan, close to Bishkek.

And when we talked about it he had also said that he thinks that the skulls that were excavated were actually brought to St.

Petersburg to the Kunstkamera Museum.

And fortunately, I knew the curators from the museum.

And then within a few weeks, we could actually assemble a team of people from our lab that actually went t St.

Petersburg to sample teeth.

-As soon as the human remains arrived from Russia, Dr.

Maria Spyrou and her team at the archaeogenetics department of the University of Tubingen started testing the teeth for microbial DNA.

They were looking for evidence that the so-called pestilence that killed the people buried in these graves was indeed the plague that swept through Europe.

As these graves predated the previous earliest known victims of the Black Death by years, Philip knew that if Maria could positively identify that they had died of plague, it would herald the discovery of a likely Black Death Patient Zero.