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pandemics and diseases have been a
constant companion of humanity for
thousands of years
and although they happen relatively
rarely they can be tremendously
destructive
and they often change society in strange
and unexpected ways
and there is perhaps no disease that has
changed the entire course of human
history more than the original plague
the bubonic plague likely originating
somewhere around the tianchan mountains
in central asia
the bacterium yersinia pestis that
causes bubonic plague
lied relatively dormant with only
occasional outbreaks for untold
millennia until something changed in the
6th century
a.d the byzantine empire was at its apex
of power and influence
she had just retaken the italian
peninsula and was close to reuniting the
entire roman
empire again when all of a sudden at the
worst possible time
the bubonic plague appeared in egypt
it's not
entirely clear how it got here from its
origins in central asia
but the first global pandemic in human
history
was about to begin anyway the bubonic
plague is spread by infected fleas that
live on the backs of rats
the rats stow away on ships and live
within close proximity to humans
so when the ships carry the infected
rats to new cities the disease
inevitably follows the rats eventually
die and the fleas that actually carry
the disease search for new hosts and
jump on humans
when the flea bites a human bacterium
enters the body
and rapidly spreads to the human's
lymphatic system and multiplies
the infected person may not show any
symptoms for one to seven days after
getting bitten
but they'll eventually develop a fever
chills
vomiting and eventually the trademark
appearance of smooth
painful booboos developing out of
swelled up lymph glands around the groin
armpits and the neck game green of the
victim's fingers toes
lips and nose will eventually develop
followed by extreme
pain caused by the decomposition of
living skin
while the victim is still alive without
proper medical treatment the fatality
rate is between 30
and 90 of victims who become infected
and even with
proper modern antibiotic care the
fatality rate still
remains around 10 today obviously the
people in sixth century europe and the
middle east had no access to antibiotics
and they didn't even know that the rats
and fleas were the cause of the pandemic
so the bubonic plague
exploded when ships carrying grain and
infected rats left
egypt for constantinople the biggest
city in the world at the time
the disease spread and would go on to
wipe out 40 percent of the city's
population
infecting even the emperor himself and
as the epicenter of the byzantine empire
the plague spread out on ships leaving
for ports across the mediterranean and
spread like
wildfire 25 of all the humans living in
the eastern mediterranean region
died within just a few years and
tens of millions died across the empire
and eurasia
the millions of deaths caused economic
mayhem across the empire who had just
taken out
massive loans to fight the wars of
reconquest in italy and the western
mediterranean
with millions of less people to work on
farms and pay their taxes
the empire can no longer afford to pay
for future campaigns or even to garrison
the new reconquests
and therefore the empire entered into a
long
long state of decline from which she
would never recover
the vast depopulation and economic
mayhem left the byzantine empire
crippled and overextended which allowed
the lombards the opportunity to quickly
and easily take over northern italy
while also providing a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the
arabs and
islam to surge over the rest of the
empire
and take most of it over just a couple
generations later
the first global pandemic would
ultimately cause the deaths of around
50 million people or 13
of all the humans in the world alive at
the time and led
to the final destruction once and for
all of the roman empire
while making room for new empires and
religions to rise up in the chaos
the plague would finally quiet down
again and remained relatively dormant
after the mid-8th century
until several hundred years later when
it would explode onto the world scene
once again
with even more fury and death than it
had ever done before
in 1347 the bubonic plague re-emerged on
the world scene in crimea
the republic of genoa in italy had a
trading outpost at the time in crimea
called
kapha which was being besieged by the
mongols a few years previously
the plague had broken out in the chinese
province of hubei around wuhan
and had killed 80 of the province's
population
it was carried across the silk road in
the mongol army's supply and logistics
lines
before infecting the army that was
besieging kaffa after suffering from the
plague for a while the mongol army
camped outside got the idea to begin
catapulting their infected corpses over
the city walls in an early attempted
biological warfare the residents of kafa
began falling victim to the plague as
well and the g
e's merchants decided to just call it
quits and escaped on their ships back to
italy
unknowingly to them however they had
brought the infected rats and fleas with
them on their ships which were the seeds
that would sow the worst pandemic
ever in all of human history after the
rats got off the ships in sicily and
genoa
the plague exploded all across italy and
quickly spread along trade routes across
the entire mediterranean and europe
so between 1347 and 1351
the plague ravaged most of the european
continent
in just these five years it's estimated
that as much as
60 of the population of the european
continent
died but some areas were hit harder than
others
mediterranean regions like italy france
and spain saw as much as 75
of their populations dying 70 percent of
england's population died out
60 percent of norway's and 20 of
germany's
paris and london both lost half of their
populations
and florence lost so many people that
they didn't recover their population
back until the 1800s but other areas of
europe were almost never even
touched by the plague like poland most
of hungary and belgium
it's unclear why exactly the plague
varied so greatly in intensity across
the continent
but within just five years six out of
every 10 people living on the continent
beforehand
was dead the black death as it became to
be known
also heavily afflicted the middle east
where approximately one
out of every three people died in that
same five-year time frame as well
it's believed that in just this
five-year length of time the bubonic
plague
may have killed as many as 200 million
people across eurasia which is
absolutely
staggering when you remember that the
entire world population
prior to the pandemic was only 475
million people
that means that it's possible that
around 42
of the entire human population of the
world died within just a few years from
a single disease
to put into perspective how absolutely
earth-shattering and cataclysmic it was
for the time
that would be exactly like if a disease
wiped out 3.15
billion people today in just a few years
it would irrevocably change the world
forever just like the black death did in
the 14th century and like the first
plague did in the 6th century
in this case the black death wiped out
most of the people living in europe
which caused the demand for common
people as laborers to skyrocket
the surviving peasants were in a much
better position to demand higher wages
and more freedom from the nobility which
the nobility had to accept as reality in
order to keep society
moving wages for surviving common people
went up the price of land plummeted and
peasants found new opportunities they
never would have had beforehand
the black death had begun the
destruction of serfdom and feudalism as
institutions in europe and gave rise to
the very beginnings of capitalism that
would replace it
it would take europe an entire two
centuries to recover back to the
population that she had
prior to the eruption of the plague and
by that point in the 1550s
capitalism was well on its way to taking
over the continent
the bubonic plague would periodically
flare back up in various places across
europe and the middle east for
centuries afterwards most notably in
london in 1665
and marseille in 1720 but none ever
became a true pandemic again
until the final and the most recent
third great plague pandemic of 1855
in china this time around the plague
appeared in the yunnan province of china
and quickly spread across the qing
empire to the british outpost of hong
kong
where it was transmitted aboard ships to
the british colonies in india
where it wreaked immense havoc this
third bubonic plague pandemic would go
on to claim the lives of 12 million more
people
mostly in india and china but it was
relatively mild everywhere else in the
world
after the discovery of the bacterium
that causes the disease and the
realization that rats and fleas were the
primary carriers in the late 19th
century
and especially after the discovery of
antibiotics the deadly
grip that the plague had over the human
species began to finally fade away
but the bubonic plague does still exist
today between
2010 and 2015 there were still 3248
recorded cases of the plague across the
world
and on average nine people still managed
to get infected by it per
year in the united states after
thousands of years of chaos and
earth-shattering pandemics though
humanity has finally learned how to
properly fight back against the bubonic
plague
if you want to learn more about how
diseases like this work on a biological
level or if you're curious for more
information on the ongoing and evolving
coronavirus pandemic
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how it spread to the rest of the world
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