The Black Death Londoners

When the Great Pestilence reached London in the autumn of 1348, the city consecrated an emergency cemetery at East Smithfield and filled it within two years — one of the only burial grounds in Europe known to hold plague dead alone. The men, women and children laid in its ordered trenches were ordinary Londoners: apprentices, servants, wool-workers, parents. Their genomes helped reveal how the catastrophe that killed perhaps half the city also left fingerprints on the immune systems of the survivors' descendants.

The genome-wide data behind this entry was published in Evolution of immune genes is associated with the Black Death.

Every Ancestrify Global25 report includes the free Notable Matches lens: your coordinates are compared to every sequenced member of every catalog entry, and the distance to the closest member is reported — a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional space the Distance lens uses. Because these are a small group of real individuals, not a population average, distances naturally run larger than population distances — that is expected, not a poor result. And one thing is never claimed: a small distance means similar ancestry composition, not that the Black Death Londoners are your ancestor. See how it looks in the live demo or read about the full G25 analysis.

• 01

  Who were the Black Death Londoners?

  The Black Death Londoners (c. 1330–1360 CE, East Smithfield, London, England) are one of the Iconic discoveries entries in our Notable Matches catalog, represented by 12 sequenced ancient genomes published in the study "Evolution of immune genes is associated with the Black Death".

• 02

  What does "matching" the Black Death Londoners mean?

  Your Global25 coordinates are compared to the entry's sequenced members and the distance to the closest one is reported — a Euclidean distance in the same 25-dimensional reference space the Distance lens uses. A notable entry is one person or one small burial group, not a population average, so distances naturally run larger than population distances.

• 03

  Are they my ancestor?

  No — and no DNA test can show that. A small distance means your genome sits near theirs in a shared reference space: similar ancestry composition, not descent. Ancestrify never claims a notable individual is your ancestor or relative.

• 04

  How do I see my own distance to the Black Death Londoners?

  Notable Matches is a free lens on every Ancestrify Global25 report — never sold separately. Order the G25 analysis (29.99 EUR), and your report ranks your coordinates against the full catalog, with a portrait, dossier and map for every entry. The public demo shows the lens with example data.

The catalog holds every published entry across three tiers — browse the full Notable Matches directory. Nearby entries:

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