The plague of Jerash

For whatever reason I didn't discuss Adapa et al. so let's this "today": At Gerash in what's now the kingdom of Jordan, was found a mass grave.

Gerash as a good Hellenistic-Roman city owned a hippodrome. Over Late Antiquity, lookin' like post-Zenobia, the locals lost interest in that sport. But its architecture was still excellent, boasting many delightfully cool basements. So the local potters took up the space for their industry and storage. Then came the Year Without A Sun; and Justinian's Flea. It seems it got re-repurposed as a mass morgue, where the bodies were left literally to rot.

As a cool space in a near-desert, these bodies stayed preserved until the recent study. Which is proving that, yes, the plague of Gerash was indeed the Flea - the Yersinia. I am pretty sure we already knew that, but from remains preserved far from the Jordan, so this evidence is better.

BACKDATE 8/28