Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Killing more than one third of the European population in the mid-14th century, the bubonic plague has long been blamed on rats that allegedly snuck onto sailing ships and transported disease-ridden fleas all over the continent. But, now, a new study currently appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that giant gerbils from Asia were more likely the rodents responsible for spreading the Black Death.
Researchers reached this conclusion upon analyzing tree rings in order to determine historical weather patterns in various regions of Europe. They then cross-referenced that data with historical records of plague outbreaks, and discovered that plague outbreaks were typically associated with warmer, wetter conditions like those found in Asia, but not Europe.
In other words, the plague was probably incubated in Asia and then carried into Europe along the Silk Road, which would point the finger at gerbils.
“If we’re right, we’ll have to rewrite that part of history,” University of Oslo professor Nils Christian Stenseth told BBC News on Monday, explaining that the weather conditions that would be ideal for rats to spread the disease would be warm summers with not too much or too little precipitation. After reviewing a “broad spectrum of climatic indices,” they found “no relationship between the… plague and the weather.”
[STORY: The bubonic plague strikes Madagascar]
Rather, they found the weather conditions in Asia would have been idea for the giant gerbil to spread the plague there, which later would have led to the European epidemics. A wet spring and warm summer would have caused gerbil numbers in central Asia to increase, which would have led to a massive population across large areas of land that is ideal for the plague to spread.
Fleas also do well in those conditions, Stenseth told the British news outlet, and they would have eventually made the jump from the giant gerbils to domestic animals and then humans. The professor called the results “rather surprising,” adding that his team now plans to analyze plague bacteria DNA obtained from ancient European skeletons.
“If the genetic material shows a large amount of variation, it would suggest the team’s theory is correct,” the BBC said. “Different waves of the plague coming from Asia would show more differences than a strain that emerged from a rat reservoir. The plague died out in Europe after the 19th Century, however outbreaks continue to this day in other parts of the world.”
[STORY: Scientists confirm China was birthplace of plague]
More than 100 million people were killed as a result of the Black Death, which began in the mid-14th century and continued until the 1800s, according to the Washington Post. The findings explain why the disease reappeared occasionally across centuries rather than consistently remaining active on the continent as long as there were rats around the spread it, the newspaper added.
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