On Friday, anthropologists announced and confirmed the germ that many feared called Yersinia pestis which caused the plague that killed third of the Europe’s population in the Middle Ages. They used 76 skeletons’ teeth and bones from the "plague pits" founded in the France, Germany, Italy and the Netherland. They had DNA test run to prove Yersinia pestis was to blame for. This germ had been around for longer than a century as a source of the Black Death which lasted from the 14th century to the 18th century. A study say that the germ was not located in Europe but in fact from Central or Southern Asia through trade. They continued to run testes on Yersinia pestis on 20 samples of DNA marker to indentify the bacterial strain. They are determined to see if our present day Yersinia pestis that has been going around the world is the match of the past Yersinia pestis, but they did not match. They were either Orientalis or Medievalis. The start of spreading started in November 1347, most likely driven by fleas living on rats that crept on the land from ship docked at the French port of Marseille. Over the six years, it reaches through western to northern France then over land to England then to all over Europe. Another guessing how the germ entered to Europe was from Norway or Friesland. After the chaos from 1347, the disease continued to spread around the continent, which causes a big mess in the social and political outcome.
http://news.discovery.com/history/black-death-plague-bacteria.html
Lynn N. Period 1
No comments:
Post a Comment