Kyle Harper

Like we don't have a great explanation of that because –

India is connected to the Central Asian world where the plague is endemic.

There's plenty of trade.

It would have plenty of chance to move to the subcontinent.

So we don't understand that.

And then if you go back even further – that's the Black Death.

You go back even further to the late antique period –

We – it's like a total mystery and the Indian sources from the – even the 5th and the 6th century are not great.

They're hard to use.

This is totally outside my language abilities.

They require totally different expertise.

I've worked with some people who think that they're like –

oblique references that may be interpreted as epidemic.

But one of the interesting things is we actually think that the plague moves through India to get to Rome.

This is not definite, but the plagues

In enzootic, it's like natural animal reservoir, is the Tian Shan Mountains where China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan meet.

And we can actually, in the scheme of things, kind of identify a pretty small region where the pandemic lineage comes from.

And we know that it doesn't go overland.

So it's not like the Black Death, which goes across the steppe.

The Mongol trade networks, military networks carry it.