We May Have Underestimated The First Known Outbreak of Bubonic Plague - ScienceAlert

The Justinianic Plague spread through west Eurasia between the 6th and 8th centuries CE, signifying the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in this part of the world.

Historian Peter Sarris from the University of Cambridge says historians and archeologists need to work together with geneticists and environmental scientists to fully understand the scope and scale of ancient disease outbreaks – including, in this particular example, the arrival of the bubonic plague.

"Some historians remain deeply hostile to regarding external factors such as disease as having a major impact on the development of human society, and 'plague skepticism' has had a lot of attention in recent years," Sarris says.

DNA analysis like this is a much more reliable method of working out where the plague spread to, Sarris says, compared with leafing through ancient texts.