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Black Death 'was not plague' say experts The Black Death may not have been caused by bubonic plague after all, say US scientists. They have been looking at church records from the 14th century to find out how the disease spread. They now think it was probably some other infection passed on by human contact and not bubonic plague which relies on flea-ridden rats. Records show the disease spread along busy roads and rivers and over natural barriers which would have restricted rats. They also say there are other diseases with similar symptoms which are more likely candidates. The modern...

Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt Cameron Walker for National Geographic News March 10, 2004 The bubonic plague, or Black Death, may have originated in ancient Egypt, according to a new study. "This is the first time the plague's origins in Egypt have been backed up by archaeological evidence," said Eva Panagiotakopulu, who made the discovery. Panagiotakopulu is an archaeologist and fossil-insect expert at the University of Sheffield, England. King Tutankhamun lies in his burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Some researchers now believe that the bubonic plague, or Black Death, originated in the village where builders...

Medieval DNA, Modern Medicine Volume 60 Number 6, November/December 2007 by Heather Pringle Will a cemetery excavation establish a link between the Black Death and resistance to AIDS? Beneath Eindhoven's modern skin of brick and asphalt lie the bones of its medieval townspeople. Studying their DNA may reveal the origin of the genetic resistance to AIDS. (Courtesy Laurens Mulkens) From the start, Nico Arts sensed that the frail remains of a child buried in front of a medieval church altar had an important story to tell. Arts is the municipal archaeologist in Eindhoven, a prosperous industrial city in the southern...

Black Death mutant gene resists Aids, say scientists Jan 4 2005 By Alan Weston, Daily Post IT HAS been described as the 'world's greatest serial killer'. The Black Death was a catastrophe which wiped out nearly half the European population, with 20m people dying between 1348 and 1350. But new research being carried out by a team from Liverpool University has shown that the disease may have produced an unexpected side-effect - resistance to the deadly HIV/Aids virus. Professor Christopher Duncan and Dr Susan Scott have already caused shockwaves among historians with their claim that the Black Death was caused...

Y. pestis was the notorious culprit behind the sixth century's Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, which killed 30%-50% of the European population in the mid-1300s, and the Third Pandemic, which emerged in China in the 1850s. Earlier putative plagues, such as the Plague of Athens nearly 2,500 years ago and the second century's Antonine Plague, have been linked to the decline of Classical Greece and the undermining of the Roman army. However, it has been unclear whether Y. pestis could have been responsible for these early epidemics because direct molecular evidence for this bacterium has not been obtained from...