pandemic

The Black Death was spread across Europe by rats. Source: rawinfoto / Adobe Stock.

2 January, 2020 - 14:00 Aleksa Vučković

Culling the World: The Catastrophic Conquests of the Black Death

Medieval history is seldom kind. The decades and centuries slumbered onwards, each one bringing its own share of wars, crime , poverty...and disease. Happiness and prosperity were rare and almost...

Lunel-Viel (Languedoc-Southern France). Victim of the plague thrown into a demolition trench of a Gallo-Roman house; end of the 6th-early 7th century. Source: 1990; CNRS - Claude Raynaud

4 June, 2019 - 21:37 ancient origins

Details of First Historically Recorded Plague Pandemic Revealed by Ancient Genomes

An international team of researchers have analysed human remains from 21 archaeological sites to learn more about the impact and evolution of the plague-causing bacterium Yersinia pestis during the...

St Macarius of Ghent Giving Aid to the Plague Victims, 1673 painting by Jacob van Oost

25 October, 2015 - 03:09 Mark Miller

The Plague that brought down mighty empires is thousands of years older than thought

The Plague is far older than previously known and later changed to become much more virulent—so virulent that it may have contributed to the decline of Classical Greece and the Roman and Byzantine...

31 March, 2014 - 23:05 aprilholloway

Study of Black Death skeletons reveals plague may have been airborne

An analysis carried out on 25 skeletons of plague victims discovered by railway engineers beneath London last year, has revealed that the Black Death was even more lethal than previously thought...

28 January, 2014 - 22:58 aprilholloway

Scientists decode 1,500-year-old plague and warn it could strike again

Scientists have, for the first time, achieved a complete reconstruction of the genome responsible for the bubonic plague, which struck the Eastern Roman Empire 1,500 years ago, and is said to have...

14 December, 2013 - 05:20 aprilholloway

Archaeologists find mass grave with evidence of cholera outbreak

Archaeologists digging in the graveyard of the Abbey of St Peter in Lucca, Italy, have discovered a mass grave that contains evidence of an ancient cholera outbreak . The researchers hope the DNA...