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A team of scientists has finally solved a centuries-old mystery surrounding the Justinian Plague, the world’s first recorded pandemic. In a study published in the journal Genes, researchers sequenced DNA from teeth recovered in a mass grave in Jerash, Jordan, close to the outbreak’s epicentre. Their analysis confirmed that the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the same microbe responsible for later pandemics like the Black Death, caused the devastating outbreak that swept through the Byzantine Empire between 541AD and 750AD.
The Justinian Plague is thought to have killed tens of millions of people, crippling the Eastern Roman Empire and altering the course of history. While historians long suspected Y. pestis, hard biological evidence had only been found in isolated European sites, far from the heart of the empire. The new findings provide the first direct proof of plague within the empire itself, demonstrating that victims in Jerash carried nearly identical strains of the bacterium, suggesting a rapid and deadly spread.
Researchers, including lead author Rays HY Jiang of the University of South Florida, highlighted how this discovery connects historical records with biological evidence. Excavations beneath the city’s former Roman hippodrome revealed that the arena—once a symbol of civic pride—had been turned into an emergency burial site, underscoring the catastrophic scale of the outbreak.
A companion study in the journal Pathogens shows that plague has circulated in human and animal populations for thousands of years, and later pandemics did not all descend from a single ancient strain. Instead, outbreaks likely emerged independently from long-standing animal reservoirs. The research underlines that pandemics are recurring phenomena tied to human activity and environmental change—a sobering reminder, as Dr Jiang notes, that “the threat will never go away.”
