Black Death may have originated in China

The first outbreak of plague originated in China more than 2,600 years ago, before spreading to Europe and Africa thanks in part to the inspiration for Sinbad the Sailor, new research has suggested.

                    People praying for relief from the bubonic plague Photo: GETTY

An international team of scientists, led by Dr Mark Achtman of University College Cork, studied 17 strains of Yersinia Pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, from sites around the world.

They then used their data to draw up a common family tree, showing how the different strains had mutated, over time, from a common root. The tree shows a branch of the disease splitting off about 728 years ago, around the time the Black Death struck.

The Black Death was the middle of three great waves of plague. The first strain appeared in the sixth century during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. That plague is thought by historians to have peaked in the 14th century and killed up to a third of the population of Europe.

The third wave of plague began in China in the late 19th century, spreading along shipping lines from Hong Kong and hitting San Francisco in 1900.

Read more at the Telegraph