Dr. Eleanor Janega

But subsequent DNA testing has not really shown that to be true.

It just seems that sometimes it can also attack you.

So if especially it gets into your lungs, we are seeing a typical mortality rate of most people dying within three days.

And if you have the kind without the lung element, it's about five days to a week.

That's right.

We tend to see that mortality rates are higher in cities for obvious reasons, because, you know, diseases are communicable.

So, for example, in Baghdad or Florence, we see a mortality rate of up to 60% of the population.

And it's sort of like the countryside drags that back down.

It begins in Kyrgyzstan in the 1330s.

And we know this because we have found a graveyard there.

where we've tested the bones, we've seen that they have died of Yersinia pestis, and very particular, they have gravestones that say so-and-so died of pestilence, right?

They don't say Black Death, we say Black Death.

Black Death is our term, not theirs.

They'll just say the plague, they'll say the pestilence.

So we know the date that it's all in those graves, and it does seem that this is essentially the river through which Yersinia pestis then flows.

And Kyrgyzstan, now people might say, Kyrgyzstan?

Why Kyrgyzstan?

The medieval world is incredibly interconnected and dependent on trade and movement of people.

through the entire period.

Even peasants, you know, they go to market.