The Four Black Deaths

The American Historical Review ^ | December 2020 | Monica H. Green

[SunkenCiv]

The Black Death, often called the largest pandemic in human history, is conventionally defined as the massive plague outbreak of 1346 to 1353 C.E. that struck the Black Sea and Mediterranean, extended into the Middle East, North Africa, and western Europe, and killed as much as half the total population of those regions. Yet genetic approaches to plague’s history have established that Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of plague, suddenly diverged in Central Asia at some point before the Black Death, splitting into four new branches—a divergence geneticists have called the “Big Bang.” Drawing on a “biological archive” of genetic evidence, I trace the bacterial descendants of the Big Bang proliferation, comparing that data to historical human activities in and around the area of plague’s emergence. The Mongols, whose empire emerged in 1206, unwittingly moved plague through Central Eurasia in the thirteenth, not the fourteenth, century. Grain shipments that the Mongols brought with them to several sieges, including the siege of Baghdad, were the most likely mechanism of transmission. The fourteenth century plague outbreaks represent local spillover events out of the new plague reservoirs seeded by the military campaigns of the thirteenth century.

[SunkenCiv]

Did the Black Death Rampage Across the World a Century Earlier Than Previously Thought? | Smithsonian Magazine

[ClearCase_guy]

Traayvon Martin
Michael Brown
George Floyd

And I forget the fourth guy

[SunkenCiv]

[singing] Blam a lam, whoa-oh black plague...

[1Old Pro]

And I forget the fourth

Tawana Vicenia Brawley?

[Thommas]

Freddie Gray

[oldbrowser]

So the Chinese have a history of spreading pandemics.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Were “wet markets” operating back then?

[Midwesterner53]

C.E. another way to ignore Christ.

[sima_yi]

I just look at “C.E.” as meaning Christian Era.

[lizma2]

Read an article years ago that blamed it on Macro Polo. (the white guy)

[Robert A Cook PE]

When you read the descriptions of the sudden onset of the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu, the black faces and black lips of its victims, the sudden but steady transfer of the Spanish FLu from town to town (by touch, by physical proximity and by (airborne) close association during ship transport, train and camp associations .... It is the same spread and the same speed as the Black Death.

Yes. I know the ever-repeated theory that the Black Death was spread by fleas spread by rats from the ships and trade caravans coming from China and the Silk Trade across the MidEast. But I see no evidence contradicting the Black Death as a Spanish Influenza mutation.

[SunkenCiv]

The Spanish Lady influenza has been isolated in victims' remains, and it's flu. And Yersinia Pestis has been isolated in Black Death remains. So, no.

[SunkenCiv]

Macros are common way of spreading windows viruses...

[null and void]

Read an article years ago that blamed it on Macro Polo. (the white guy)

Or was that his much smaller cousin, Micro Polo?

[Dilbert San Diego]

I do that too. I once told someone that CE means Christian Era.

In trying to deny any connection to the life of Christ, in our calendar, the years are still counting from the time of Christ’s birth. Yes I know that many think Christ was born somewhere between 4 BC and 6 BC and not in the Year 1. But the point is, in using this CE nomenclature, they still are using the count from the time of Christ in numbering the years. They aren’t fooling anyone.

[freedumb2003]

Traayvon Martin
Michael Brown
George Floyd

And I forget the fourth guy

Daffy Duck:

"Shoot me now! Shoot me now!"

[M Kehoe]

Thanks.

The ‘Rona isn’t that bad after all.

Fun ping for perspective...

5.56mm

[Macoozie]

“Yes. I know the ever-repeated theory that the Black Death was spread by fleas spread by rats”

I always thought it was by bad Blow and unclean Hookers?

[SunkenCiv]

:^) It’s no worse than any other case of the sniffles, but even a mild virus can be an opportunistic infection and help push already-ill patients into a death spiral. The Black Death was 72-hours-and-out, while panic porn got its victims to hoard toilet paper. :^)

[SunkenCiv]

Thufferin’ thuccotash!