Late Middle Ages · Central Asia · Disaster
1332
Plague breaks out in the Issyk-Kul region of Central Asia
1332
Nestorian Christian gravestones near Lake Issyk-Kul recorded a spike in deaths from an unspecified pestilence. Modern DNA analysis of these graves has confirmed Yersinia pestis. The Black Death may have begun here, carried by marmots on the Silk Road, before traveling west with Mongol trade caravans toward the Black Sea.