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Black Death caused by gerbils?
Topic Started: Feb 24 2015, 06:57 PM (354 Views)
CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31588671

Black rats may not have been to blame for numerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague across Europe, a study suggests.

Scientists believe repeat epidemics of the Black Death, which arrived in Europe in the mid-14th Century, instead trace back to gerbils from Asia.

Prof Nils Christian Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, said: "If we're right, we'll have to rewrite that part of history."

The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Black Death, which originated in Asia, arrived in Europe in 1347 and caused one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.



Makes a certain amount of sense, but how many gerbils would have made it to Europe, and how far did they get? I assume they wouldn't have been widespread across the whole of Europe!
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Zero Revolution
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King Zero

Is this thread's title wrong, or am I just misreading it? :P

That's interesting, I wonder how it'll affect what was already recorded.
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Fixed. I was going to call it "Black Death not caused by rats?", then changed to "Black Death caused by gerbils?", but didn't edit it properly :P .
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GrieferLord
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Tank Sniper

i would imagine that the rats also carried the pathogen and got it from contact with gerbils.
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