Ethiopian Artwork and the Black Plague

It might look like this is a Medieval European painting at first glance, but it isn’t — check out the writing, the orange and blue dominant tones, the clothing of the small figures, and the directional patterns of the lines. This is an Ethiopian mural from the 1600s.

And what it depicts is suggestive regarding a new hypothesis of just how far geographically the world’s worst pandemic — the Black Death of the mid 14th-century — spread.

Scholars had known the Plague (Yersinia Pestis) spread to sub-Saharan Africa, but didn’t think it got there until much more recently. Because the region has relatively fewer written records, figuring out a chronology for the spread of this disease has been difficult.

But Medieval historian-turned anthropological geneticist Monica Green recently proposed that the Black Death did indeed extend its reach into Africa’s west, south, and east in the 1300s. She argues this most strongly because of her analysis of the genome of current plague strains in east and central Africa, which she shows derive from the same version as the European Medieval strain.

Other evidence is suggested more tangentially– like the art shown here. St. Sebastian was venerated by Europeans in the Middle Ages because of his association with protection from disease: he became popular in Ethiopia after the mid-14th c. Furthermore, archaeological evidence from west Africa has shown that a number of civilizations collapsed or had their populations severely diminished at this time: Ife, Akrokrowa, and Kirikongo.

Scientists would love to unearth some teeth samples with DNA that could conclusively demonstrate whether the Black Death spread into sub-Saharan Africa. But part of studying the distant past means using every bit of evidence to tell as many stories of the dead as possible.