'Gerbils replace rats' as main cause of Black Death

[HiThere]

"Black rats may not have been to blame for numerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague across Europe, a study suggests.

Scientists believe repeat epidemics of the Black Death, which arrived in Europe in the mid-14th Century, instead trace back to gerbils from Asia.

Prof Nils Christian Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, said: "If we're right, we'll have to rewrite that part of history."

The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Black Death, which originated in Asia, arrived in Europe in 1347 and caused one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.

Over the next 400 years, epidemics broke out again and again, killing millions of people.

It had been thought that black rats were responsible for allowing the plague to establish in Europe, with new outbreaks occurring when fleas jumped from infected rodents to humans.
Rat reservoir

However, Prof Stenseth and his colleagues do not think a rat reservoir was to blame.

They compared tree-ring records from Europe with 7,711 historical plague outbreaks to see if the weather conditions would have been optimum for a rat-driven outbreak.

He said: "For this, you would need warm summers, with not too much precipitation. Dry but not too dry.

"And we have looked at the broad spectrum of climatic indices, and there is no relationship between the appearance of plague and the weather."



_http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31588671

 

[A Jay]

"We show that wherever there were good conditions for gerbils and fleas in central Asia, some years later the bacteria shows up in harbour cities in Europe and then spreads across the continent," Prof Stenseth said.

Correlation is not causation, come on.

"We originally thought it was due to rats and climatic changes in Europe, but now we know it goes back to Central Asia."

We know this based on what, because there were good conditions for gerbils in Asia one year and a plague outbreak occurred years later in Europe? What other tie is there to Central Asia?

If the genetic material shows a large amount of variation, it would suggest the team's theory is correct.

Different waves of the plague coming from Asia would show more differences than a strain that emerged from a rat reservoir.

So the original idea was that a giant pool of rats carried a single strain of the plague, and now that they have a gerbil out of Asia theory if there's multiple strains of the plague then the gerbil out of Asia theory is correct? Seriously?

Science is back in the Dark Ages..

 

[crystalicdream]

You know, a this reminds me of a huge problem in science nowadays, and that would be the smooth talking of hypotheses and results that really don't say anything or not much. Oh, and of course seeing connections where there are none, just like A Jay said, correlation is not causation.

 

[Pierre]

Some countries affected by the Black Death, like Iceland, never had gerbils (or rats for the matter). In addition, gerbils (like rats) have daily displacements that can not account for the propagation speed of the Black Death.

 

[HiThere]

Some countries affected by the Black Death, like Iceland, never had gerbils (or rats for the matter). In addition, gerbils (like rats) have daily displacements that can not account for the propagation speed of the Black Death.

I agree and have read about the shortcomings of the present view on the causes of the Black Death on SOTT. But still I find it encouraging that there are developments in the thinking around this, maybe it will lead to further progress later on.

 

[casper]

Climate change may be responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, according to a study published in the Journal. The survey 7200 antique rings of trees 2500 years old was discovered that there is a connection between climate change and events in human history, such as migration, the plague and the rise and fall of empires. Warm and wet weather coincides with periods of prosperity, and drought and bad weather conditions with the political upheavals such as the fall of the Roman Empire.

- The rise and fall of civilizations in the past have been associated with changes in the environment, mainly due to the impact on the water supply, agricultural production, health and civil conflict - standing in the study.

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The unfavorable climatic conditions contributed to the spread of the pandemic Black Death (plague) which, after 1347, the European population decreased by 40 to 60 percent.