Posted on 01/27/2014 5:08:06 PM PST by John W
An international team of scientists has discovered that two of the most devastating pandemics in human history -- responsible for killing as much as half the population in Europe at the time -- were caused by strains of the same bacterium.
The researchers announced Monday that the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death were caused by distinct strains of the same pathogen, and warned that similar pandemics can strike again.
The Plague of Justinian struck in the 6th century and is estimated to have killed between 30 and 50 million people -- virtually half the worlds population as it spread across Asia, North Africa, parts of the Middle East and Europe.
The Black Death struck about 800 years later, killing an estimated 50 million Europeans between just 1347 and 1351 alone.
Researchers were able to isolate miniscule DNA fragments from the 1500-year-old teeth of two victims of the Plague of Justinian who were buried in Bavaria, Germany. They then reconstructed the genome of the oldest Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for these plagues, and compared it to a database of genomes of more than a hundred contemporary strains.
The bacterium Yersinia pestis has jumped from rodents to humans throughout history, and Poinar said rodent reservoirs of plague still exist today in parts of Asia and Ukraine.
"What (the study) does seem to suggest is that obviously Yersinia pestis has this tremendous capability of emerging and re-emerging from these centres with these rodents," said Hendrik Poinar, director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre.
(Excerpt) Read more at ctvnews.ca ...
According to ancient astronaut theorists............
How many have died of abortions since Roe v. Wade?
So, the Lyubov Orlova is potentially bringing Black Death to Britain?
or
Liberal RATS will be the death of us?
(damn it’s late)
Yup. So true.
Just so its not the organs-turn-to-liquid plague. I hate when that happens.
Ping...(Thanks, nully!)
Yep. Those "oh! So Cuuuute!" Prairie Dogs, for starters. (Not to mention mice and Hantavirus, but that's another bug entirely).
Plague must be endemic in Vietnam. I know someone who was in Vietnam while working for the Public Health Svc. He got the plague while he was there.
Yeah, well, I can see where that might shake some people up. I am sure we all remember where we were when 9/11 happened. I was in the prison, and a criminal, who had been watching TV, came and told me about the first aircraft. I thought maybe it was an accident. Then he came and told me about the second one, and I knew it was no accident.
bkmk
But did you stay at a Holiday Inn last night? :-)
It is my understanding that Plague arrived from Egypt with rats on grain ships. You are right about the devastation though
Justinian was a great emperor but overreached trying to restore the western Roman Empire
We have plenty of plague-infected critters right here in the US. There have been 21 human cases of plague between 2009 and 2013.
I beg to differ.
SARS was quite infectious, and had it escaped our control measures, it could have been devastating. Public health officials managed to stop it through rigorous isolation and infection control measures. Had SARS broken out in a different area of the world--like in a refugee camp somewhere, where there are no modern medical facilities--the story might have been different.
We know far better how to control the spread of disease than they did back during the plague pandemics.
Nothing against the good Dr. Shibasaburo, but it *is* easier to say "Yersinia pestis" than it would be to say something like "Shibasaburoides pestis." Although had that ended up being the bug's name, we'd probably always just say "S. pestis."
Thanks Joe..
thanks for the OP!
thanks for the OP!
Thanks bigheadfred.
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