The Black Death, originating in Asia, arrived in the Mediterranean harbors of Europe in 1347 CE, via the land and sea trade routes of the ancient Silk Road system. This epidemic marked the start of the second plague pandemic, which lasted in Europe until the early 19th century. This pandemic is generally understood as the consequence of a singular introduction of Yersinia pestis, after which the disease established itself in European rodents over four centuries. To locate these putative plague reservoirs, we studied the climate fluctuations that preceded regional plague epidemics, based on a dataset of 7,711 georeferenced historical plague outbreaks and 15 annually resolved tree-ring records from Europe and Asia. We provide evidence for repeated climate-driven reintroductions of the bacterium into European harbors from reservoirs in Asia, with a delay of 15 ± 1 y. Our analysis finds no support for the existence of permanent plague reservoirs in medieval Europe.

Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis Department of Biosciences University of Oslo NO 0316 Oslo Norway;

Dendroecology Landscape Dynamics Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape CH 8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland;

Dendroecology Landscape Dynamics Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape CH 8903 Birmensdorf Switzerland; Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research University of Bern CH 3012 Bern Switzerland; Global Change Research Centre AS CR v v i CZ 60300 Brno Czech Republic; and

Department of Physiology Institute of Basic Medical Sciences University of Oslo NO 0372 Oslo Norway

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No evidence for persistent natural plague reservoirs in historical and modern Europe

Scale-dependent climatic drivers of human epidemics in ancient China