and on the future history of the world.
Travel into a transformative moment in history and learn how the Black Death ignited processes that led to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and beyond.
Professor Dorsey Armstrong is Associate Professor of English at Purdue university and an expert on the legend of King Arthur. She received her A.B. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University and Her Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from Duke University. Professor Armstrong has written extensively on Arthurian literature and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur and is editor in chief of the celebrated academic journal Arthruiana. In addition to Arthurian literature, her research interests include medieval women writers and late medieval print culture.
Rats were not to blame for the spread of plague during the Black Death, according to a study. The rodents and their fleas were thought to have spread a series of outbreaks in 14th-19th Century Europe. But a team from the universities of Oslo and Ferrara now says the first, the Black Death, can be "largely ascribed to human fleas and body lice". The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, uses records of its pattern and scale. The Black Death claimed an estimated 25 million lives, more than a third of Europe's population, between 1347 and 1351. "We have good mortality data from outbreaks in nine cities in Europe," Prof Nils Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, told BBC News. "So we could construct models of the disease dynamics [there]." He and his colleagues then simulated disease outbreaks in each of these cities, creating three models where the disease was spread by: rats, airborne transmission, fleas and lice that live on humans and their clothes. In seven out of the nine cities studied, the "human parasite model" was a much better match for the pattern of the outbreak. It mirrored how quickly it spread and how many people it affected. "The conclusion was very clear," said Prof Stenseth. "The lice model fits best." "It would be unlikely to spread as fast as it did if it was transmitted by rats. "It would have to go through this extra loop of the rats, rather than being spread from person to person."