Black Death study lets rats off the hook

[Robert]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/17/black-death-rats-off-hook

Rats weren't the carriers of the plague after all. A study by an archaeologist looking at the ravages of the Black Death in London, in late 1348 and 1349, has exonerated the most famous animal villains in history.
"The evidence just isn't there to support it," said Barney Sloane, author of The Black Death in London. "We ought to be finding great heaps of dead rats in all the waterfront sites but they just aren't there. And all the evidence I've looked at suggests the plague spread too fast for the traditional explanation of transmission by rats and fleas. It has to be person to person – there just isn't time for the rats to be spreading it."
He added: "It was certainly the Black Death but it is by no means certain what that disease was, whether in fact it was bubonic plague."

Nope, me neither.

 

[redrumloa]

Aliens did it, don't ya know?

1347 Europe: Black Plague, 1347-50: Reports from this period feature strange cigarlike objects flying low through the sky and dispersing noxious mists. Soon after these objects passed by, plague would break out in that area. Other features from this period similar to modern UFO reports include sightings of mysterious MIB-like scythe-wielding "reapers" clad in black hoods & robes, and mysteriously slaughtered cattle and other animals. One year before an outbreak of plague, a "column of fire" was seen over the Pope's palace at Avignon. A monstrous "whale" was cast ashore at Egemont shortly before another plague outbreak, and numerous times during this period "rumblings like thunder" were heard even when there were no storms. Blazing "comets" were seen numerous times in the heavens - some of which may have been real celestial objects frightening an omen-crazy populace - of which numerous were said to be accompanied by "flames" (aurorae?) hanging low in the sky.

 

[Robert]

@Jim:

Hahaha - why the hell not?

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

I've heard some such thing before - that the black death was person to person.
Pneumonic plague

 

[Speelgoedmannetje]

On a side note: Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" is an absolute must-see considering medieval black death.

 

[metalman]

Seems more likely that both a virus type plague and the Bubonic Plague where occurring in different places that were both being referred to as Black Death

Was the Black Death Ebola?

Researcher says Black Death was caused by Ebola like virus

"Endemic bubonic plague is essentially a rural disease because it is an infection of rodents," the book says. "The Black Death, in contrast, struck indiscriminately in the countryside and towns."

You would have a larger rat population in the towns because more availability of food and fewer predators than in the country.