Africa

A newly confirmed mass grave in the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan, offers chilling insight into one of history’s first recorded pandemics. Hundreds of plague victims were buried within a matter of days, revealing how the Plague of Justinian devastated entire communities. The findings show that people who usually lived spread out across regions were suddenly concentrated in death. In a recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, researchers from the University of South Florida analyzed bioarchaeological signatures from the mass burial in the hippodrome of Jerash. The team discovered that the victims belonged to a mobile population that was part of the wider urban community. Normally spread across the region, they were united in a single burial