An intriguing discovery has been made regarding the plague’s origins. A mummy, dated back to approximately 1780 BC, showed evidence of the plague. This male mummy, housed at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy, underwent scientific examination. Researchers found that both the bone tissue and intestinal contents linked back to The Black Death. They tested positive for the bacteria yersinia pestis, the pathogen responsible for the bubonic plague.
This finding is significant as it marks the first time the plague has been identified in a specimen outside of medieval Europe and Asia.
The research team presented their findings to the European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association. They reported: “Here, we report the presence of Y. pestis DNA in an ancient Egyptian mummy of an adult male from the collection of the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.
“The individual, who was anthropogenically mummified, was radiocarbon-dated from the end of the Second Intermediate Period to the beginning of the New Kingdom, yet its exact provenance within Egypt is unknown.
“Bone tissue and intestinal content derived from the mummy were first subjected to a shotgun metagenomics approach. Thereby, we detected Y. pestis DNA in both samples indicating broad tissue tropism of the pathogen during an already advanced state of disease progression.
“This is the first reported prehistoric Y. pestis genome outside Eurasia providing molecular evidence for the presence of plague in ancient Egypt, although we cannot infer how widespread the disease was during this time.”
It’s a common misbelief that the Black Death is solely a relic of the medieval era, made obsolete by modern advancements in hygiene and technology. However, this isn’t entirely accurate.
There have been instances of the plague in more recent times, including the year 2015. Although no cases have been reported in the UK, outbreaks have occurred in places like Africa, Asia, South America, and the USA.
From 2010 to 2015, Public Health England recorded 3,248 cases. Unlike the past, the disease is now treatable with antibiotics, mitigating its deadliness.
The plague continues to be spread primarily by animals, as explained by Michael Marks, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: “People with plague are very sick. They aren’t getting on planes basically. So the way plague moves around the world isn’t individuals with plague (unlike say COVID) but by infected animals.
“The risk to the UK is extremely low, close to zero, as evidenced by the fact that cases continue in the USA every year but we don’t see cases reach the UK.”