Why, then, did modern growth begin in England? This is an old question that has been reinvigorated thanks to the stimulus provided by scholars who have argued that parts of China were as economically developed as western Europe until almost 1800.

The steppe is a sprawling ribbon of treeless grasslands stretching from the plains of Hungary to eastern Mongolia. Ancient branches of the plague belong to the steppe and the highlands that abut it, from the Caucasus Mountains west of the Caspian Sea to the Tien Shan mountains where China, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan meet.

There are more than 1,200 species of bats, comprising around 20 percent of all mammalian diversity.

The domestication of the horse was an epidemiological fact of the first order, and it was soon followed by the domestication of camels, with the Bactrian camel tamed before 2500 BCE and the dromedary by at least 1000 BCE. The hardiness of the camel added new itineraries of long-distance connection across arid central Asia and dry parts of east and central Africa.¹⁰

Human land use continues to expand, and the human-animal interface is dominated by our need to feed ourselves and, in particular, the unslakable global demand for meat. Industrial farming, and especially meat production, creates evolutionary environments where new germs adapt and emerge.

@jawbreakerhq​

It is not unreasonable to hope that more archaeological DNA samples will further clarify this picture, but for centuries, plague had taken hold as a domestic threat, simmering in nearby rodent populations.