Taking “Pandemic” Seriously: Making the Black Death Global

A century of paleopathology

“…They caution against the quick adoption of conclusions and adamantly push for question‐based research (Pääbo et al, ; Stoneking, ; Wilber & Stone, 2012). These new directives have led to more robust analyses that re‐evaluate the evolutionary histories of diseases such as tuberculosis (Brites & Gagneux, ), the plague (Eroshenko et al, ; Green, ), and metabolic disorders such as vitamin D deficiency, which has been linked to varying human genotypes associated with skin pigmentation (Brickley, Moffat, & Watamaniuk, ). These new analyses adopt a decidedly more nuanced and bio‐cultural approach toward understanding human disease.…”

The Black Death and the Future of the Plague

“…The most common of these presentations are perhaps better classified by their primary mode of exposure: insect bite or the entry of infectious bodily fluids through cuts and abrasions (bubonic and septicemic), inhalation (pneumonic), and ingestion (gastrointestinal and pharyngeal), respectively. While the "classic" rat-flea-human pathway is currently dominant, there is welldocumented and long-standing evidence that other pathways of human exposure were common in past outbreaks and could become common again under certain conditions (Stenseth et al 2008;Green 2014, in this issue; Carmichael 2014, in this issue). The human flea, Pulex irritans, has been implicated in Tanzanian plague outbreaks between 1986 and 2004 (Laudisoit et al 2007) and may have been the agent of plague epidemics in medieval northern Europe, as well (Hufthammer and Walløe 2013).…”

New Science and Old Sources: Why the Ottoman Experience of Plague Matters

“…12 Recent genetics research on the 2009 Libyan outbreak has demonstrated that a branch of the medievalis strain (2.MED) was involved. This strain, independent of the Third Pandemic, could be one that was active during the Second Pandemic (Cabanel et al 2013;Green 2014, in this issue). 13 Bioarcheology and aDNA research have only recently started being used in the field of Near Eastern studies.…”