Putting Africa on the Black Death map: Narratives from genetics and history

IF 0.3 Q3 AREA STUDIES
Monica H. Green
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引用次数: 48

Abstract

Did the Black Death, the famous, devastating plague pandemic that struck the Mediterranean and Western Europe in the mid-14th century and seeded new strains of the pathogen, Yersinia pestis, in new locales, also reach Sub-Saharan Africa? That it reached the Islamic North African littoral has never been in question: there is ample testimony from Arabic documentary sources for its devastating effects from Egypt to the Maghreb. But did it stop there? Archaeologists now have reason to believe that there was widespread abandonment of urban communities in West Africa in the 14th or 15th centuries. Focusing on the other side of the continent, the present essay argues that previously unutilized evidence—a “living archive” of genetic data combined with a new reading of linguistic and documentary evidence from the 14th through 20th centuries—suggests that plague did have a significant impact on pre-modern East Africa. The strains of Y. pestis currently found in East and Central Africa derive from one of the lineages involved in late medieval outbreaks in Central Eurasia. This post-Black Death strain, it is argued here, entered the continent most likely in the late 15th or early 16th century. This coincides with hitherto unexplained population migrations and other cultural signs of reactions to a deadly emerging disease. Although no aDNA (historical genetic material) for Y. pestis has yet been recovered from late medieval or early modern Africa, the present essay suggests that evidence for Y. pestis’s evolution and transcontinental movements, even those outside of Africa, can help archaeologists and historians draw Africa more centrally into the narratives of global history.
让非洲登上黑死病地图:来自遗传学和历史的叙述
黑死病,这场著名的、毁灭性的瘟疫流行病,在14世纪中期袭击了地中海和西欧,并在新的地区传播了新的病原体——鼠疫耶尔森菌,是否也传播到了撒哈拉以南非洲?它到达伊斯兰北非沿岸从未受到质疑:从埃及到马格里布,阿拉伯文献资料充分证明了它的毁灭性影响。但它就到此为止了吗?考古学家现在有理由相信,在14或15世纪,西非的城市社区普遍被遗弃。本文聚焦于非洲大陆的另一边,认为以前未使用的证据——基因数据的“活档案”,再加上对14世纪至20世纪语言和文献证据的新解读——表明瘟疫确实对前现代东非产生了重大影响。目前在东非和中非发现的鼠疫杆菌菌株来自欧亚大陆中部中世纪晚期爆发的一个谱系。这里认为,这种后黑死病毒株很可能在15世纪末或16世纪初进入欧洲大陆。这与迄今为止无法解释的人口迁移以及对一种新出现的致命疾病做出反应的其他文化迹象不谋而合。尽管尚未从中世纪晚期或现代早期的非洲发现鼠疫杆菌的aDNA(历史遗传物质),但本文表明,鼠疫杆菌进化和跨洲运动的证据,甚至是非洲以外的运动,可以帮助考古学家和历史学家将非洲更集中地纳入全球历史的叙述中。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
1
审稿时长
52 weeks
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