Medieval "Black Death" Was Airborne, Scientists Say - History in the Headlines - 0 views
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w, analysis of skeletal remains found by construction workers digging railway tunnels in central London has led scientists to a stunning new conclusion: The Black Death was not transmitted through flea bites at all, but was an airborne plague spread through the coughs, sneezes and breath of infected human victims.
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dcs-armstrong on 26 Mar 15New studies on the Black Death... Scientists say it was airborne
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he bacterium that causes the plague, which confirmed that the individuals buried underneath the square had likely been exposed to—and died from—the Black Death.
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rather than bubonic plague, which is transmitted to humans through bites from infected rat fleas, they concluded that this must have been a pneumatic plague that made its way into the lungs of the infected and spread through coughs and sneezes.
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60 percent of Londoners were wiped out by the Black Death from the autumn of 1348 to spring of 1349.
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transmission by rat fleas as an explanation for the Black Death “simply isn’t good enough. It cannot spread fast enough from one household to the next to cause the huge number of cases that we saw during the Black Death epidemics.
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Another interesting finding was that the remains in the square appeared to come from three different periods: not only from the original Black Death epidemic in 1348-1350, but from later outbreaks in 1361 and the 1430s.
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Archaeologists planning another dig in the area this summer estimate that thousands of bodies are left to be found underneath Charterhouse Square.