The Black Death

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The Black Death

No one is exempt as it sweeps in off the shores and into the countryside "laying its

burden of death and pestilence."1 For about 300 years prior to the beginning of the 1300s

Europe prosperes freely, but a series of natural disasters occurres. Poor harvests and

famine are common and as the prosperous years come to a close, economies begin to fall

in to a recession at the onset of the Black Death. Europe, on a whole, is about to take a

step backward.

There are plagues throughout recorded history, but none are of the magnitude nor

have the far reaching effects that the Black Plague has. Its namesake comes from

symptomatic hemorrhages that turned black.2 Though most people associate the Black

Death with the middle ages, forms of the Bubonic Plague are recorded in China as early

as 224 BC. The Black Death embarkes on a journey as an epidemic in the Gobi Desert in

the 1320s. By 1400, China's population of 125 million had is reduced to 90 million.

Southwest Asia and Europe follow China with strikingly similar losses in their population

numbers. In 1347, the Kipchaks who are nomads from the Euro-Asian Steppe, are

thought to deliberately infect a European city with the disease. The Kipchaks would laid

siege to a Genoese trading post in Crimea. Hoping to weaken the defenders, they will use

a catapult to launch infected corpses into the compound. Trading vessels from Crimea

subsequently will bring cargo infested with the disease burdened rodents and crew west.

Starting in Sicily in 1347, it begins a four year reign of terror traveling as far as

Greenland. During this four year period it is believed Europe lost one full third of its

population.3

The effects the Plague...

... middle of paper ...

... brought back to earth by their own mortality. The Renaissance was a reawakening,

resurrection, or renewal of reality showing life in a more pragmatic nature.

The Plague still maintains its identity today. Cases are still reported throughout the

world. Thankfully, rarely in North America. Mortality has dropped from the 70 to 90%

experienced in the 14th century to 3 to 5 % today. The loss of life in those four short years

of history was immense. A plague of the proportions that struck Europe would be

compared to the effects of a nuclear war today. A thought that chills my bones to the core.

Just imagine how a government of today's society would react to a disease with no cure

that spread with the same rapidity and executed with the same effectiveness. The answer

lies just one unknown virus away in our own evolution cycle. Will humanity survive?

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