Blame the Gerbils

© The Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource

The Black Death originated in Asia, and once it got to Europe, it killed millions in outbreak after outbreak over the next 400 years. We all learned in school that the disease was spread by rats, but apparently, rats may have had very little, if anything, to do with it. Tree-ring records of contemporary weather patterns show that "there is no relationship between the appearance of plague and the weather," says the University of Oslo's Professor Nils Christian Stenseth. "We show that wherever there were good conditions for gerbils and fleas in central Asia, some years later the bacteria show up in harbor cities in Europe and then spread across the continent." The one constant here is the fleas, which we all know are evil little messengers of the devil, disease or no disease: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31588671