TL;DR: earliest evidence of ancestor to Yersinia pestis found in Kyrgyztan. Not saying that's the origin, just the earliest known find of an ancestor so far. C

TL;DR: earliest evidence of ancestor to Yersinia pestis found in Kyrgyztan. Not saying that's the origin, just the earliest known find of an ancestor so far. Condensed version: "People who died in a fourteenth-century outbreak in what is now Kyrgyzstan were killed by strains of the plague-causing bacterium Yersinia pestis that gave rise to the pathogens responsible several years later for the Black Death, shows a study of ancient genomes." "Other evidence puts the origins of the Black Death in this part of Central Asia. Among modern strains of Y. pestis bacteria, those sampled from marmots and other rodents in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Xinjiang in northwest China, surrounding the Tian Shan mountain range, were most closely related to the Kara-Djigach strain. 'We can’t really say it’s that village or that valley, but it’s likely that region,' says Krause." "[Miscellaneous scholar] is less sure of the study’s conclusion that the plague’s ‘big bang’ occurred around the time of the Kyrgyzstan deaths in 1338–39. Green has hypothesized, on the basis of genetic evidence, that the thirteenth-century expansion of the Mongol Empire catalysed the spread and diversification of Y. pestis strains responsible for the later Black Death." "Where is Kyrgyzstan": https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kyrgyzstan/@36.2729637,68.5579844,5.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x3897381dfce927f3:0x281058b74e88c433!8m2!3d41.20438!4d74.766098 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kyrgyzstan/@36.2729637,68....