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Abstract
Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens of millions of deaths throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe, helping to end antiquity and start the Middle Ages. In this article, we argue that this paradigm does not fit the evidence. We examine a series of independent quantitative and qualitative datasets that are directly or indirectly linked to demographic and economic trends during this two-century period: Written sources, legislation, coinage, papyri, inscriptions, pollen, ancient DNA, and mortuary archaeology. Individually or together, they fail to support the maximalist paradigm: None has a clear independent link to plague outbreaks and none supports maximalist reconstructions of late antique plague. Instead of large-scale, disruptive mortality, when contextualized and examined together, the datasets suggest continuity across the plague period. Although demographic, economic, and political changes continued between the 6th and 8th centuries, the evidence does not support the now commonplace claim that the Justinianic Plague was a primary causal factor of them.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lee Mordechai
- National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, MD 21401;
- History Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 9190501 Jerusalem, Israel
| | - Merle Eisenberg
- National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, MD 21401
- History Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
| | - Timothy P Newfield
- History Department, Georgetown University, NW, Washington, DC 20057
- Biology Department, Georgetown University, NW, Washington, DC 20057
| | - Adam Izdebski
- Paleo-Science & History Independent Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
- Institute of History, Jagiellonian University, 31-007 Kraków, Poland
| | - Janet E Kay
- Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
| | - Hendrik Poinar
- Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada
- Department of Biochemistry, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada
- McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada
- Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada
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Keller M, Spyrou MA, Scheib CL, Neumann GU, Kröpelin A, Haas-Gebhard B, Päffgen B, Haberstroh J, Ribera I Lacomba A, Raynaud C, Cessford C, Durand R, Stadler P, Nägele K, Bates JS, Trautmann B, Inskip SA, Peters J, Robb JE, Kivisild T, Castex D, McCormick M, Bos KI, Harbeck M, Herbig A, Krause J. Ancient Yersinia pestis genomes from across Western Europe reveal early diversification during the First Pandemic (541-750). Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2019; 116:12363-12372. [PMID: 31164419 PMCID: PMC6589673 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1820447116] [Citation(s) in RCA: 52] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The first historically documented pandemic caused by Yersinia pestis began as the Justinianic Plague in 541 within the Roman Empire and continued as the so-called First Pandemic until 750. Although paleogenomic studies have previously identified the causative agent as Y. pestis, little is known about the bacterium's spread, diversity, and genetic history over the course of the pandemic. To elucidate the microevolution of the bacterium during this time period, we screened human remains from 21 sites in Austria, Britain, Germany, France, and Spain for Y. pestis DNA and reconstructed eight genomes. We present a methodological approach assessing single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in ancient bacterial genomes, facilitating qualitative analyses of low coverage genomes from a metagenomic background. Phylogenetic analysis on the eight reconstructed genomes reveals the existence of previously undocumented Y. pestis diversity during the sixth to eighth centuries, and provides evidence for the presence of multiple distinct Y. pestis strains in Europe. We offer genetic evidence for the presence of the Justinianic Plague in the British Isles, previously only hypothesized from ambiguous documentary accounts, as well as the parallel occurrence of multiple derived strains in central and southern France, Spain, and southern Germany. Four of the reported strains form a polytomy similar to others seen across the Y. pestis phylogeny, associated with the Second and Third Pandemics. We identified a deletion of a 45-kb genomic region in the most recent First Pandemic strains affecting two virulence factors, intriguingly overlapping with a deletion found in 17th- to 18th-century genomes of the Second Pandemic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marcel Keller
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany;
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany
| | - Maria A Spyrou
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Christiana L Scheib
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
- Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, 51010 Tartu, Estonia
| | - Gunnar U Neumann
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Andreas Kröpelin
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany
| | | | - Bernd Päffgen
- Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, 80799 Munich, Germany
| | - Jochen Haberstroh
- Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites, 80539 Munich, Germany
| | | | - Claude Raynaud
- CNRS, UMR5140, Archéologie des Sociétés Méditerranéennes, 34199 Montpellier, France
| | - Craig Cessford
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Raphaël Durand
- Service d'Archéologie Préventive de l'Agglomération de Bourges Plus, 18023 Bourges Cedex, France
| | - Peter Stadler
- Department of Pre- and Protohistory, University of Vienna, 1190 Vienna, Austria
| | - Kathrin Nägele
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Jessica S Bates
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Bernd Trautmann
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany
| | - Sarah A Inskip
- McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Joris Peters
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany
- ArchaeoBioCenter, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, 80539 Munich, Germany
- Department of Veterinary Sciences, Institute of Palaeoanatomy, Domestication Research and the History of Veterinary Medicine, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, 80539 Munich, Germany
| | - John E Robb
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
| | - Toomas Kivisild
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3ER, United Kingdom
- Department of Human Genetics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | | | - Michael McCormick
- Initiative for the Science of the Human Past, Department of History, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
- Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Kirsten I Bos
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany
| | - Michaela Harbeck
- State Collection of Anthropology and Palaeoanatomy Munich, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, 80333 Munich, Germany;
| | - Alexander Herbig
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany;
| | - Johannes Krause
- Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany;
- Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, 07745 Jena, Germany
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