The Black Death devastated medieval Western Europe, ultimately eliminating about one-third of its population. Researchers have pinpointed the bacterium responsible and its probable origins, but the exact mechanisms and reasons for its spread to Europe remain somewhat ambiguous. A new study in the journal Communications Earth & Environment proposes that either a significant volcanic eruption or a series of smaller eruptions might have triggered events leading to the plagueās arrival in the Mediterranean region during the 1340s.
This pestilence is technically regarded as the second plague pandemic. The first pandemic, known as the Justinian Plague, surfaced around 541 CE and swiftly disseminated throughout Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Even the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, after whom the pandemic is named, managed to survive the illness. Although plague outbreaks continued for the next 300 years, the disease progressively lost its virulence until it seemingly disappeared.
However, in the Middle Ages, the Black Death erupted dramatically, with its first well-documented occurrence in 1346 in the Lower Volga and Black Sea areas. That marked the onset of the second pandemic. In the 1630s, new waves of plague decimated half of the populations in affected cities, and a subsequent outbreak in France between 1647 and 1649 severely reduced the populace. London suffered an epidemic in the summer of 1665, which by October had killed one in 10 Londonersāover 60,000 individuals. Similarly, significant losses were reported in Holland during the 1660s. The pandemic eventually subsided by the early 19th century, but a third plague pandemic struck China and India in the 1890s. Sporadic outbreaks continue to occur today.