A quiz question · easy
The Black Death killed somewhere between a third and a half of medieval Europe in four years. It's caused by a single tiny organism, and people argued about which kind for centuries. Bacterial, viral, fungal, or parasitic?
*Yersinia pestis* is a bacterium that lives normally in fleas and rodents. It still exists; people still catch plague every year (about 3,000 cases worldwide), now treatable with antibiotics. The fungal-ergot theory is actually the explanation for the *Dancing Plague* of 1518, not the Black Death — easy to mix up. The 1918 flu was viral. And while plague is spread by flea bites, the killer is the bacterium the flea is carrying, not the flea itself.
Read the full facts →From the facts
The Black Death The Black Death was a plague pandemic that swept Eurasia and North Africa between 1346 and 1353, killing an estimated 75–200 million people. It is the deadliest pandemic in recorded human history.
Related questions
- Approximately what fraction of Europe's population did the Black Death kill in 1347–1351?
- What pathogen caused the Black Death?
- At which Sicilian port did the Black Death first arrive in Europe in October 1347?
- Modern 2013 DNA analysis at Aschheim confirmed the Plague of Justinian was caused by which pathogen?