The study shows that environmental conditions in Europe will prevent the Black Plague from surviving in animal reservoirs, and we owe the plague’s spread to something else.
The Black Death devastated Europe between 1347 and 1353 and killed millions of people. But Science Alert writes that the spread of the plague did not end there, and epidemics continued into the 19th century.
One of the most common facts about plague in Europe is that it was spread by rats – in some parts of the world, the bacterium Yersinia pestis that causes the plague has long been present in wild rodents and fleas in what’s called the animal ‘reservoir’. “.
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It is known that the plague, which started with rodents, sometimes spread to humans. It is assumed that it was the animal tanks that became the source of the plague epidemic in Europe. But researchers also think that the plague may have returned to Europe from Asia. A new study has shed light on the events of that period.
A group of researchers from the University of Glasgow and Steling University did their research and suggested that rats had been unfairly slandered – environmental conditions in Europe at the time should have prevented the Black Plague from surviving in long-term animal tanks, which makes sense or else the plague must have let it last that long stay in Europe.
Scientists suggest two developments in the scenario: First, the plague has reappeared from reservoirs in Asia, and second, there may be short- or medium-term reservoirs in Europe. But researchers believe there may be a third scenario where the first two are intertwined.
In addition, scientists believe that the rapid spread of the Black Plague and epidemics over the next few centuries may indicate that slow-moving rats did not actually play a decisive role in the spread of the plague.
european climate
Scientists focused on studying factors such as:
- soil properties;
- climate conditions;
- land types;
- rodent varieties.
Scientists suggest it was these factors that influenced whether the Black Plague could survive in bodies of water. The researchers used comparative analysis and concluded that centuries-old reservoirs of wild rodent plague from 1348 to the early 19th century were unlikely. In fact, it is even less so than it is today, when a comprehensive study excluded such reservoirs in Europe.
However, things are very different in regions west of China and the United States, where scientists have found all the necessary conditions for stable reservoirs of plague in wild rodents. For example, scientists believe that long-term rodent reservoirs may have existed in Central Asia for thousands of years. Moreover, based on ancient DNA and textual evidence, scientists believe the plague formed a short- to medium-term reservoir, or even several, among European rodents as they traveled from Central Asia to Europe. Probably, the most likely place for this would be Central Europe.
However, local soil and climatic conditions are not conducive to stable reservoirs, and thus scientists believe that re-importation of plague is required, at least in some cases, and possibly more than once.
radical difference
To better understand the role rats play in spreading the disease, the scientists compared different plague epidemics:
- firstthe beginning of the 6th century – the end of the 8th century;
- Second1330s – 1800s;
- third1894 – still in places like Madagascar and California.
The vast majority of these pandemics are associated with a form of bubonic plague, in which the disease affects the human lymphatic system. In pneumonic plague, bacteria infect a person’s lungs.
The researchers found that the second pandemic was radically different from the later ones in terms of the nature and transmission of the disease.
FirstlyIn the second pandemic, mortality rates reached 50%, while in the third, they rarely exceeded 1%.
latterthese outbreaks differ in the rate and patterns of transmission – the rate of transmission during the second outbreak was astonishing compared to the third epidemic, where the rate of movement of goods was much higher.
No matter how the individual waves of the second pandemic began, scientists discovered that both wild and non-wild rodents, including rats, were moving much slower than the rate at which the plague spread across the continent.
the thirdThere are also differences in the seasonality of plague. For example, the plague of the third epidemic is associated with the fertility cycles of rat fleas – they increase in relatively humid conditions at temperatures between 10 and 25 ° C. At the same time, outbreaks of the second pandemic could occur, for example, in the Bubonic form in the Baltic regions during the winter months, but the plague was a summer infection in the Mediterranean climate.
The researchers caution that these striking differences raise an important question – whether bubonic plague really depended on resident rodents to transmit it, could it actually have spread more efficiently from person to person. Scientists suggest that the disease can be transmitted through touch, respiratory systems, or ectoparasites, including fleas and lice.
However, scientists caution that additional research will be required to answer these questions, but now there is something to consider.
Previously Focus He wrote about what ancient DNA said in the 14th century that it protected people from the bubonic plague.
Source: Focus
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