I'm reading thru latest volley of work right now on the #JustinianicPlague & will report thoughts about implications for historians. At the moment, it seems there are crucial issues about terminology & dating--all of which are salutary to debate, esp. for interdisciplinary work.
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On terminology, one pointer about adjectival forms: "Justinianic" is the proper adjective, in English, for things having to do w/ the Emperor Justinian (Justinianus). "Justinian" is the proper adjective for things having to do w/ persons named "Justin"--as in Timberlake, Bieber.
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Okay, I'm giving the new Rasmussen et al. 2019 paper a close read. (As a historian, of course.) The new piece largely consists of point-by-point replies to Keller et al. 2019 (bioRxiv). What needs to be kept in mind is that both studies are arguing about
#plague research as it ..Show this thread -
.. stood about 2 years ago, when the original study by Damgaard et al. 2018 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0094-2 …) was presumably in press. Keller et al. have done some resequencing work on Damgaard et al.'s results, but largely the two studies are debating points put into play by a 2017 ...
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... study by Eroshenko et al. (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187230 …) which overturned what had been the consensus in
#plague genetics since 2004: to wit, that the principle (oldest & repeated) reservoir of#YersiniaPestis was in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Eroshenko et al. said little about ..Show this thread -
.. the historical implications of their field studies & genotyping of Y. pestis isolates collected in Kyrgyzstan (just off China's western border), but in fact they were huge (& were noted as such at the time, e.g., https://twitter.com/monicaMedHist/status/942940008268345345?s=20 …; https://twitter.com/monicaMedHist/status/994820845301305344?s=20 …). That is, ...
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.. that the results from Kyrgyzstan shift our focus about the *pandemic* strains of
#YersiniaPestis (i.e., those that caused the#JustinianicPlague & the#BlackDeath) off of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau & over to the Tian Shan mountain range that lies at the border w/ China. ...Show this thread -
The implications of this realization (that the apparent ancestral home of the surviving strains of the 0.ANT lineage points to the biological origins of the medieval pandemics) have already made their way into
#plague history: e.g., Green 2018 (https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/2125 ). ...Show this thread -
So, what's at stake in the current debate btw these two genetics teams? 1) How long ago did the lineages documented by the
#aDNA from Kyrgyzstan (Damgaard et al. 2018) and from western Europe (Keller et al. 2019, etc.) diverge from each other? And 2) by what route did the ...Show this thread -
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#JustinianicPlague lineage reach the Mediterranean, thus igniting the pandemic as documented in historical sources? There are some questions about labeling and wording that could be clearer. But perhaps it bears stressing that both studies are pushing us all into territory ..Show this thread -
.. where we do not yet know how to name things, or assess chronology. Clearly, keeping up on the very latest
#plague research is vital to all parties attempting to enter this fast-moving field. (And I can attest: it is a challenge!) I look forward to seeing these terminologicalShow this thread -
... issues worked out, which will enable all parties involved in these vital debates about pandemic disease to move forward more effectively. In the meantime, I'll end by plugging a piece I have coming out in a few days. (Don't worry: you'll readily find it announced on Twitter.)
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In the meantime, here are a few random posts from the past 2 years on the significance of the Eroshenko et al. 2017 study (which was not referenced in original Damgaard et al. 2018 piece in
@nature): - https://twitter.com/monicaMedHist/status/994820845301305344?s=20 … - https://twitter.com/monicaMedHist/status/994821705230114816?s=20 … -https://twitter.com/monicaMedHist/status/1000509820510732288?s=20 …Show this thread -
Essay on the significance of the new palaeogenetics of
#YersiniaPestis for our understanding of the First#Plague Pandemic: "When Numbers Don’t Count: Changing Perspectives on the Justinianic Plague," https://eidolon.pub/when-numbers-dont-count-56a2b3c3d07 …, now posted on@eidolon_journal.Show this thread
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