Scientists say they've solved a 700-year-old mystery: Where and when Black Death began

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Where did the Black Death come from? And when did it first appear?

As the deadliest pandemic in recorded history – it killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe and the Mediterranean between 1346 and 1353 — it's a question that has plagued scientists and historians for nearly 700 years.

Now, researchers say they've found the genetic ancestor of the Black Death, which still infects thousands of people each year. New research, published this month in the journal Nature, provides biological evidence that places the ancestral origins of Black Death in Central Asia, in what is now modern-day Kyrgyzstan.

What's more, the researchers find that the strain from this region "gave rise to the majority of [modern plague] strains circulating in the world today," says Phil Slavin, co-author on the paper and a historian at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

But like many a mystery, this one isn't so easily solved.