Ancient DNA analyses of skeletal remains of plague victims
from the 6th century AD provide information about the phylogeny and the place
of origin of this pandemic
From the several pandemics generally called 'pestilences'
three are historically recognized as due to plague, but only for the third
pandemic of the 19th-21st centuries AD there were microbiological evidences
that the causing agent was the bacterium Yersinia pestis. "For a long time
scholars from different disciplines have intensively discussed about the actual
etiological agents of the past pandemics.