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Black Death skeletons unearthed by Crossrail project
BBC ^ | 29 March 2014 Last updated at 20:00 ET | James Morgan

Posted on 03/31/2014 11:43:12 AM PDT by BenLurkin

Records say thousands of Londoners perished and their corpses were dumped in a mass grave outside the City, but its exact location was a mystery.

Archaeologists now believe it is under Charterhouse Square near the Barbican.

They plan to expand their search for victims across the square - guided by underground radar scans, which have picked up signs of many more graves.

Crossrail's lead archaeologist Jay Carver says the find "solves a 660-year-old mystery".

"This discovery is a hugely important step forward in documenting and understanding Europe's most devastating pandemic," he said

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: ancientautopsies; blackdeath; blackplague; bubonicplague; godsgravesglyphs; plague; yersiniapestis
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To: RJS1950

“With the rabbit it was probably still from fleas on the animal.”

That sounds right. Darn vermin. Or to go full-bore western, dern varmints.

“Tularemia can cause blisters and boils along with a pneumonic form and issues with the lymph nodes which are somewhat similar to the diagnostic points for plague.”

Great googly-moogly!


21 posted on 03/31/2014 12:42:13 PM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: faithhopecharity

Yeh next thing you know they will be cloning it. Egad!


22 posted on 03/31/2014 12:58:27 PM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose o f a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped.)
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To: RJS1950

OK good! thanks


23 posted on 03/31/2014 1:01:58 PM PDT by faithhopecharity ((Brilliant, Profound Tag Line Goes Here, just as soon as I can think of one..))
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To: SunkenCiv

Most people forget that we are all Black Plague survivors.


24 posted on 03/31/2014 1:11:33 PM PDT by Little Bill (EVICT Queen Jean)
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To: BenLurkin; SunkenCiv

Maybe the original name was Charnelhouse Square


25 posted on 03/31/2014 1:34:44 PM PDT by wildbill (Bed)
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To: SpinnerWebb

ROTF!!!


26 posted on 03/31/2014 1:36:24 PM PDT by FrdmLvr ("WE ARE ALL OSAMA, 0BAMA!" al-Qaeda terrorists who breached the American compound in Benghazi)
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To: RJS1950

It is possible to extract Y. Pestis DNA from bones of medieval plague victims but not the bacterium itself.

***
That is reassuring. Thanks for the info.


27 posted on 03/31/2014 2:10:48 PM PDT by Bigg Red (1 Pt 1: As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct.)
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To: dsc
Yep. Plague first came to the United States in the 1850's. The rail companies were importing Chinese Coolies to work on the transcontinental railway.

There was a small plague outbreak in San Francisco's Chinatown district. An alert doctor spotted the outbreak almost immediately, and appealed to the city council to institute a quarantine and rat catching program.

The town fathers refused to believe there was plague in their fair city.

They screwed around long enough for it to infect the local ground squirrel population where there was no hope stopping it from spreading. Thanks to their inaction, one can be exposed to plague anywhere in the western US.

Any parallels one wishes to draw with a more recent "gay plague" are left to the reader as an exercise.

Those who do not learn the lessons of the past...

28 posted on 03/31/2014 2:14:27 PM PDT by null and void ( Everything evil in the world may not be Islamic but everything Islamic is evil.)
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To: momtothree

Nope, fragments of Y. Pestis DNA that are identifiable to the specific bacterium but DNA strands like this are not an infectious agent.


29 posted on 03/31/2014 2:55:05 PM PDT by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: Little Bill

That is pretty much true of most of today’s populations. There was a Documentary show on a study done in England as to why a certain village survived one of the plagues. It was found that a certain DNA marker for resistance was passed to the decendents of survivors of the first great plague and they mostly survived and passed that DNA to their decendents up to today.


30 posted on 03/31/2014 2:57:58 PM PDT by RJS1950 (The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
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To: null and void

“Those who do not learn the lessons of the past... “

Jesus wept.


31 posted on 03/31/2014 3:03:39 PM PDT by dsc (Any attempt to move a government to the left is a crime against humanity.)
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To: Little Bill

Well, not us personally, but many of our ancestors skated through. :’)

The pneumonic version of the plague is very contagious and kills faster, while the much more common flea-bite kind is pretty hit and miss.

Once infected, most people will die in about three days, or “72 hours and out” as it was once described to me. The estimated drop in the European population during the series of plague outbreaks during the Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance is in the ballpark of one third to one half, and worldwide it was in that same area, up to half the human population just up and died.


32 posted on 04/01/2014 2:09:45 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Obama is now making Jimmy Carter look like Attila the Hun. /focus/news/3138768/posts)
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To: wildbill

:’) There were four others, this one was Charnel No.5.


33 posted on 04/01/2014 2:10:49 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Obama is now making Jimmy Carter look like Attila the Hun. /focus/news/3138768/posts)
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Teeth help scientists unearth secrets of Black Death
http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/teeth-help-scientists-unearth-secrets-of-black-death-263706.html


34 posted on 04/01/2014 2:15:04 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Obama is now making Jimmy Carter look like Attila the Hun. /focus/news/3138768/posts)
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