And you thought it was all over? Well it is now. Seems to be loads of news at the moment about research into the plague/Black Death that caused mortality of up to 50% during the mid-Fourteenth century. It seems to be all unrelated items, but its a bit weird to be seeing so much in the news at the moment. Perhaps time for those time travelers to go back and cure the plague for our 14th century friends?
Here’s some more information from the scientists who recently published a paper on the subject in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science:
The remains of more than 100 plague victims buried between 1348 and 1350 in the East Smithfield burial site showed evidence of a strain of Y. pestis, according to the researchers, led by Hendrik N. Poinar of McMaster University in Canada and Johannes Krause of Tuebingen University in Germany.
“Our data reveal that the Black Death in medieval Europe was caused by a variant of Y. pestis that may no longer exist,” the researchers wrote.
This courtesy of azcentral.com.
No cause to relax though as other variants of plague are alive and kicking, however, we, unlike the 14th century chaps, have antibiotics to fight any further outbreaks.
Related articles
- Black Death genome nearly found (marklord.info)
- imabonehead: Study: Medieval plague may be extinct – Yahoo! News (news.yahoo.com)
- Study: Bacteria Causing ‘Black Death’ Likely Extinct (foxnews.com)
- Bacteria Causing ‘Black Death’ Likely Extinct, Study Finds (livescience.com)
- ‘Black Death’ bacteria likely extinct, study finds (msnbc.msn.com)
