Causes
This small, blood-sucking insect was the primary vector responsible for spreading the bacteria from rats to humans.
Flea
This painful, golf-ball-sized swelling of the lymph nodes in the groin, armpits, or neck was the most famous symptom of the plague.
Buboe
Originating in Venetian-controlled ports, this practice involved forcing incoming ships to wait anchor for 40 days to ensure they weren't carrying disease.
Quarantine
The Black Death is believed to have originated in this continent before traveling westward along trade routes.
Asia
This type of historical source is a firsthand account created during the time of the event, such as a diary, letter, or skeleton from a plague pit.
Primary
Medieval people widely believed this invisible, foul-smelling "bad air" was the main cause of the plague.
Miasma
Because so many peasants died, the surviving workers could demand this from their feudal lords, disrupting the feudal system.
Higher wages/more rights
These religious zealots traveled from town to town, publicly whipping themselves to win God’s forgiveness and stop the plague.
Flagellants
The rapid spread of the plague was unintendedly accelerated by the secure and bustling trade networks established by this vast nomadic empire.
Mongol empire
Due to this issue, there are a severe shortage of written records that detail the peasant experience of the Black Death
Illiterate
This is the specific scientific name of the rod-shaped bacteria that caused the Black Death.
Yersinia pestis
Historians estimate that the Black Death wiped out roughly this fraction or percentage of Europe's total population between 1347 and 1351.
30-50%
Because medieval medicine couldn't cure the plague, people relied on carrying small bouquets of flowers and herbs, a practice later immortalized in this famous nursery rhyme.
Ring a ring o' roses
During a siege on this Crimean port city in 1346, the Mongol army catapulted plague-infested corpses over the city walls—an early form of biological warfare.
Caffa
Mass burial sites discovered by modern archaeologists, containing hundreds of plague victims jumbled together, are known by this grim term.
Plague pits
Many deeply religious Europeans believed the pandemic was sent by God for this reason.
punishment for humanity's sins
This specific variant of the plague attacked the respiratory system and was spread directly through coughing and sneezing.
Pneumonic plague
Tragically, many Europeans used this group as a scapegoat, falsely accusing them of poisoning local water wells.
Jewish people
This famous Moroccan scholar and traveler witnessed the devastating impact of the plague in Damascus and Cairo, recording it in his journals.
Ibn Battuta
Modern scientists can extract this genetic material from the dental pulp of medieval skeletons to prove the victims died of Yersinia pestis.
DNA
In 1345, astrologers at the University of Paris blamed the plague on a literal alignment of these three celestial bodies.
Saturn, Jupiter and Mars
This 1381 violent uprising in England was heavily influenced by the economic changes and labor shortages caused by the Black Death.
Peasant's revolt
This traditional medical practice involved applying leeches to balance a patient's "four humors."
Bloodletting
In Cairo, Egypt, the Mamluk Sultanate suffered heavily; at its peak, the city lost roughly this staggering number of people every single day.
10000-20000
This famous 14th-century English document, compiled before the plague to record landholdings and taxes, allows modern historians to calculate exactly how many tenants died by comparing it to later records.
Manorial Roll