Genetic Results Of The Medieval Black Death
That Black Death of a plague that roiled across Europe and England has been found to still throw a shadow over England. A new study at the University of Durham studied DNA in the remains of 4th and 11th century sites in England. Then the researchers compared the material from the past with a study from contemporary English people.
There turned out to be more genetic variations in the past than in modern England. The head of the study is Rus Hoelzel
of the U. Of Durham thinks some "random genetic drift" may have affected the lessened DNA diversity but that the Black Death in England not only killed off such a large proportion of the population of Western Europe in the 1340s and 1660s. Dr. Hoelzel was quoted in the New Scientist
saying, "The main factors in support of a role for plague are the timing and the fact that it affected different families [to varying degree]".
Since families were affected differently, those who were more susceptible to the plague (often said to be bubonic plague bacterium)
which is said to have come from Sicily from where it migrated to France where it lurked for nearly two centuries. The Italians managed to miss some of the deadly threads because,
There turned out to be more genetic variations in the past than in modern England. The head of the study is Rus Hoelzel
of the U. Of Durham thinks some "random genetic drift" may have affected the lessened DNA diversity but that the Black Death in England not only killed off such a large proportion of the population of Western Europe in the 1340s and 1660s. Dr. Hoelzel was quoted in the New Scientist
saying, "The main factors in support of a role for plague are the timing and the fact that it affected different families [to varying degree]".
Since families were affected differently, those who were more susceptible to the plague (often said to be bubonic plague bacterium)
which is said to have come from Sicily from where it migrated to France where it lurked for nearly two centuries. The Italians managed to miss some of the deadly threads because,
"They closed down ports and stopped people travelling at the first sign of infection... And they had a 40-day quarantine period. I think the Black Death was the result of a virus that probably had a 37-day incubation and infection period, so the Italian quarantine period was just right."
"In England, King Henry VIII reduced [the quarantine period] to 30 days at one point, and the country suffered." So added a colleague, Susan Scott, from the University of Liverpool.
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