Have you heard of the "Black Death"?
This is an ancient and virulent infectious disease that has been endemic worldwide for nearly two thousand years.
There have been 3 major epidemics in history that have claimed many lives.
The most famous of these was the "Black Death" in Europe during the Middle Ages, which directly harvested nearly one-third of Europe's population.
However, what people didn't expect was that their terrible "Black Death" was ended by a group of rats who fled from Asia!
What's going on here?
European medieval "Black Death"
In 1347, the Mongols established the Kipchak Khanate, one of the four Han states, and then launched an attack on the Black Sea port city of Kaffa.
In this war against the Black Sea port city of Kafa (present-day Feodosia, Ukraine), the Mongol army suffered heavy losses.
Enraged, they threw the bodies of their dead soldiers into the city of Kaffa, which was one of the important trading points for Italian merchants at the time, and the Mongol army did this in order to spread the plague.
It didn't take long for their cruel strategy to work, and Kaffa soon fell, and the inhabitants of the city contracted the plague.
However, what they did not expect was that their willful behavior brought havoc to their homeland.
What the Mongol army did not expect was that the plague did not disappear with the end of the war, but spread to European countries with the Italian merchants who escaped the city of Kaffa.
In the beginning, it traveled by water with merchant ships from the city of Caffa to Messina, Sicily, Italy, and then traveled north to Genoa and Marseille in France via seafarers and dockers.
It was from these two important ports that the plague that swept across the continent spread rapidly, at first only a few people were infected, but soon the plague, known as the "Black Death", quickly spread throughout Europe.
Frighteningly, the Black Death spread at an alarming rate, with most patients dying within 2-7 days after infection, and it infects rodents mainly through bucella pestis and then transmitted to humans through rat flea bites.
Coupled with the poor sanitation conditions in European cities at that time, rats were everywhere, so this became a hotbed for their transmission, and the most terrifying thing is that it can also be transmitted through direct contact between people, and people are helpless in the face of this sudden terrible disease.
When this black death plague swept across England, London fell into despair overnight, Britain had never encountered such a terrible plague before, and death and despair quickly enveloped the city.
When people are walking on the streets, their companions or relatives suddenly collapse, but there is nothing they can do, and all they can do is quickly transport the bodies of the deceased outside the city, because this can slow the spread of the epidemic.
From Italy, the Black Death first occupied major cities such as Venice and Florence, then crossed the Alps into Switzerland, then north into Germany, then captured London through the English Channel, and finally reached the northern part of Scandinavia, it can be said that almost all of Europe has not escaped the plague.
The century-old "Black Death" hit European countries particularly hard, Italy and France were the worst hit areas, the Italian writer Boccaccio's hometown Florence was almost completely destroyed, and 80% of the people unfortunately contracted the disease and died.
Boccaccio experienced all this firsthand, and in his work "Decameron", he recorded the tragic situation in which the city turned into hell overnight: pedestrians on the streets died suddenly in the middle of the way, the dead in the family were unknown, until the stench of death was exposed, and a large number of corpses were transported out of the city every day...
In Europe, the Black Death caused a total of about 25 million deaths, which accounted for one-third of the European population at that time, and had a profound impact on the economic and social order.
During the period of the Black Death, Europe fell into unprecedented chaos, due to the large number of deaths, grave diggers who undertook funeral work dug up new professional "death merchants", and church priests busied themselves one after another to burn large numbers of corpses.
In the face of the plague, medieval Europeans had no way to cope, believing that it was God's punishment for mankind and could only seek forgiveness through prayer.
People were desperate to find the source of the virus, so they blamed the Jewish minority at the time, which also set off a wave of mass persecution in some countries.
For a time, Jews were slandered and framed, and even accused of being "poisoners", and tens of thousands of Jews were burned alive in Germany.
However, in the 18th century, the "Black Death" in Europe was alleviated, and the influencers behind it were ended by a group of rats who fled from Asia.
Great earthquake in India
Around the beginning of the 18th century, a devastating earthquake struck northern India.
This terrible natural disaster has not only left tens of millions of Indians homeless, but also brought unimaginable disaster to an animal that has been hiding underground for a long time – the Indian brown house rat that lives in underground burrows across India.
You know, before the earthquake, Indian brown house rats had lived here for tens of thousands of years.
They are good at digging burrows, using burrows as homes to live in, and Indian brown house rats are gentle and timid, rarely appear on the ground, let alone have contact with humans.
However, this sudden earthquake directly destroyed the cave they had worked hard to dig to pieces, and in desperation, the brown house rats could only climb on the ground and begin their difficult road of survival.
In fact, when the earthquake first occurred, brown house mice were not much threatened, because India that had just experienced the earthquake was in ruins, and people did not have the time and energy to pay attention to these sudden rats, so brown house mice took the opportunity to eat a lot of human corpses exposed to the ground after the earthquake.
More than a month later, nearly a million hungry brown house mice have gathered in northern India, and their numbers have seriously affected human daily life.
Seeing the increasing arrogance of brown house rats, the Indian government finally realized the seriousness of the problem and ordered a large-scale anti-rodent campaign across the country.
Because of the huge gap in strength between the two sides, the brown house rat quickly lost the battle, coupled with the excessive number of the population also led to a competition for resources within the brown house mouse, so under the double pressure, the brown house mouse family reached a consensus and decided to migrate to the west, hoping to find a new home.
According to ancient records, in the summer of 1727, a large group of brown house rats appeared on the banks of the Volga River and began a long journey, crossing several rivers, then climbing mountains, wading across the Dnieper, and finally crossing the Bug River into the European continent.
I thought that I would be able to usher in a new life far from my homeland, but who knew that as soon as I set foot on European soil, the brown house rat was besieged by humans.
Initially, the Europeans planned to eradicate these alien species altogether because they were concerned about the potential risk of the disease transmitted by brown house mice.
But soon, something strange happened - with the appearance of brown house rats, the "Black Death" that had ravaged Europe for centuries began to decline significantly.
It turned out that before the arrival of brown house rats, European slave owners often used indigenous black rats for torture, which made a large number of black rats the main spreaders of the Black Death, but brown house rats from exotic lands, with stronger adaptability, defeated black rats and seized their territory, and as the number of black rats plummeted, then naturally, the scope of Black Death transmission began to shrink.
Blessings and misfortunes depend on each other
Who would have thought that a group of rats who fled in the past turned out to be the main source of alleviating the "Black Death".
Countless medical scientists have explored the cause of this miracle, and it is only in modern times that the answer to this question has not been answered.
It turned out that the Black Death was caused by Y. pestis, mainly transmitted by fleas on mice, and brown house mice brought a flea that was more loyal to its owner, which only parasitized brown house mice and did not pose a threat to humans.
Coupled with the strong brown house rat defeating the black house mouse in Europe, this also cut the chain of transmission of the disease, and eventually, the plague, which had lost its basis for transmission, gradually disappeared.
This century-long "Black Death" plague had a profound impact on European history, and it was not until the early 18th century that the plague gradually subsided.
There is a good saying: "Woe and fortune depend on each other".
After this, Europe broke the tyranny of the church, and many people did not believe in God as before, but began to believe in science.
Moreover, countless people died of the "Black Death", and those who remained inherited the property of family members, which to a certain extent promoted the germination of capitalism.
Although a huge price was paid in the process, this catastrophe also prompted Europe to emerge from the Middle Ages, Renaissance ideas germinated in humanistic care, and science and technology developed rapidly.
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