Black death researchers extracted plague DNA from 14th century skulls found in east London. Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA
Archaeologists
and forensic scientists who have examined 25 skeletons unearthed in the
Clerkenwell area of London a year ago believe they have uncovered the
truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Britain and
Europe in the mid-14th century.
Analysis of the bodies and of
wills registered in London at the time has cast doubt on "facts" that
every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused
by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.
Now
evidence taken from the human remains found in Charterhouse Square, to
the north of the City of London, during excavations carried out as part
of the construction of the Crossrail train line, have suggested a
different cause: only an airborne infection could have spread so fast
and killed so quickly.
The Black Death arrived in Britain from
central Asia in the autumn of 1348 and by late spring the following year
it had killed six out of every 10 people in London. Such a rate of
destruction would kill five million now. By extracting the DNA of the
disease bacterium,
Yersinia pestis, from the largest teeth in
some of the skulls retrieved from the square, the scientists were able
to compare the strain of bubonic plague preserved there with that which
was recently responsible for killing 60 people in
Madagascar.
To their surprise, the 14th-century strain, the cause of the most
lethal catastrophe in recorded history, was no more virulent than
today's disease. The DNA codes were an almost perfect match.
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