Scientists Determine Plague of Justinian Was the Black Death
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013May 15, 2013
Scientists have announced that the Plague of Justinian was the form of plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The same form of the plague killed millions in Europe in the Middle Ages (the 400′s through the 1400′s) during a pandemic known as the Black Death, and again in the 1600′s. The Plague of Justinian began in the A.D. 500′s and is named for the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I (482-565). The plague during his reign is the first recorded instance of a pandemic—an outbreak of infectious disease that affects many people over a wide area. The Plague of Justinian affected areas of central and southern Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. In particular, it ravaged the city of Constantinople, which is now called Istanbul, during the 50 some years it was most virulent, from 541 to the 590′s.
Scientists from the Palaeogenetics Group at the Institute of Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, analyzed the DNA from skeletal remains of plague victims buried during the 600′s in Bavaria, Germany. The remains all showed infection with Y. pestis, indicating that the Justinian plague and the Black Death were of the same variety.
Y. pestis infects such rodents as rats. Fleas that feed on the rat then become infected, and the fleas can then transmit the bacteria from rodent to rodent and from rodents to human beings or pets. Symptoms of plague develop in humans from one to eight days after infection. Such symptoms include high fever, rapid pulse, headache, body aches, and weakness. In the most common form of the plague caused by Y. pestis, bubonic plague, the plague bacteria invade lymph nodes near the flea bite, causing painful swellings called buboes. The buboes usually appear in the legs, neck, armpits, or groin.
Experts estimate that between 25 and 100 million people died of plague during the Plague of Justinian. The Black Death in Europe killed 20 to 30 million people by 1400. A third plague pandemic began in China in the mid-1800′s. Over the next 75 years, plague spread to every inhabited continent and killed up to 20 million people. Health professionals eventually brought plague under control in U.S. cities in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s, but plague-infected wild rodents spread to many western states.
Plague still occurs. Between 1,000 and 2,000 cases are reported annually, with a handful of those cases from the United States. The huge drop in numbers of plague cases is to some extent owing to improved sanitation and reduced contact between humans and rats. Nevertheless, scientists are still surprised by, and are not able to completely account for, the reduction in infection by plague over the centuries.
Other World Book articles:
- Apocalypse Then: A History of Plague (a Special report)
- Epidemic
- London (War, plague, and fire)