DNA Evidence of Plague Found in Scotland

News November 10, 2025

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EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND—The Scotsman reports that DNA evidence of the Black Death has been found in the teeth of a teenaged boy whose skeletal remains were unearthed at St. Giles’ Cathedral in 1981. More than 100 burials dated to between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries were recovered during the excavation. The boy’s skeleton was dated to between 1300 and 1370, when there had been two major outbreaks of bubonic plague in Edinburgh. “We would never have known this person had evidence of the plague on him, especially because he was buried in an individual grave rather than the mass graves or plague pits we associate with the plague,” commented city council archaeologist John Lawson. For more, go to "DNA of the Black Death."

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