Recent comments in /f/history

letsgetawayfromhere t1_j52be4d wrote

Reply to comment by War_Hymn in The Black Death may not have been spread by rats after all by Rear-gunner

Actually they do. Fleas usually specialize in the mammal (or group of closely related mammals) they feed on. They can survive feeding on other mammals instead, but they will lose fertility to the point of becoming completely infertile. So fleas will always try and stick to “their”mammal if they can.

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SerKevanLannister t1_j5241ac wrote

Reply to The Black Death may not have been spread by rats after all by Rear-gunner

I’m a medievalist. It’s been accepted for years that fleas spread the disease, and one of the animals they travel on = rats (especially along shipping routes). Fleas, obviously, are tiny and hide in weird places (not just on animals) so the plague spread to even isolated villages etc as a shipment of cloth could bring in infected fleas

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Colosseros t1_j522xgh wrote

Reply to comment by Dominarion in The Black Death may not have been spread by rats after all by Rear-gunner

I wrote out paragraphs to try and explain it too. And I come to the same conclusion. I put it this way:

>Think about it. Humans are built to spread pathogens by breath. Especially in a world where the literacy rate is in the single digits, and there is no mass communication.

News traveled by word of mouth.

You don't even need the fleas at that point. You just need panicked people running from the plague in every direction. Some of whom will be carriers.

It's really not a mystery at all.

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Colosseros t1_j520l89 wrote

Reply to comment by Rear-gunner in The Black Death may not have been spread by rats after all by Rear-gunner

No, that's not a problem. Pulmonary infections of yersinias pestis can take a much longer time to gestate than when it's introduced to the blood. You can travel, symptomless for a week, breathing on people and spreading it. That's it. There's no mystery here. People traveled much faster than the rats. For example, on the back of a horse, which would also be a carrier, as a mammal. The rats never needed to migrate to get it done. They didn't even need to arrive by ship once it jumped to humans. Because of how much time humans spend with each other, and other mammals.

All you need for an outbreak is a sudden decline in the rat population, which then results in the fleas jumping to other species at much greater number. Fleas don't really care what they bite. It's just that rats live like humans in swarms, piled on top of each other. So rat blood is just the most widely available, and widely accessible food source... until it isn't. So really, when they try to make a point about the climate suggesting the opposite of what we see in the historical record, they're shooting themselves in the foot while missing the elephant in the room. It's not strange at all that conditions that would stress the rat population would result in higher transmission to humans. It would also result in higher transmission to dogs, cats, sheep, pigs, donkeys, horses, cows, etc... You know. The list of all the animals humans spend the most time with.

It vectored towards us because we were what was available. And when it figured out how to infect our bronchial sacks, it really spread like wildfire. Think about it. Humans are built to spread pathogens by breath. Especially in a world where the literacy rate is in the single digits, and there is no mass communication.

News traveled by word of mouth.

Read that sentence again. That's the elephant in the room. If a town found out about a neighboring town being afflicted with plague, that necessarily meant that someone traveled in person to say it, and breathed on people to do it. That's it. There's no mystery.

edit: spelling

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