Abstract
The exceptional mortality caused by the plague pandemic that devastated Afro-Eurasia in the 14th century had a profound impact on European society, its economy, literature and art. Contemporary biological research also echoes this significant period: the Black Death is often invoked as one of the main causes of certain genetic peculiarities, and even of certain diseases, that characterize today's populations in Europe and the Middle East.
As early as 1962, for example, it was hypothesized that the frequency of blood groups A, B and O reflected the effects of the strong natural selection imposed by the pandemic on the European population. This gives rise to the idea that our genes may have made our ancestors more or less resistant or susceptible to infection by Yersinia pestis. Indeed, perhaps part of the catastrophic mortality of the Black Death was due to the high susceptibility of the medieval population to this infection... But how can we verify this hypothesis? A recent technological revolution in genetics could enable us to determine for the first time the role of our genes in this deadly pandemic and, more surprisingly, to measure the effect this pandemic had on human evolution and health.
