Just when we found out that the hype about the Crusades was partially a myth, now we have another millennial myth blow up in our faces. Rats have been exonerated for having killed a hundred million people with the Black Plague. Instead, scientists have discovered that this deadly recurring scourge was caused by rat cousins, the gerbils. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the Washington Post reports:
After nearly eight centuries of accusing the black rat for spreading the bubonic plague, scientists say they have compelling evidence to exonerate the much-maligned rodent. In the process, they’ve identified a new culprit: gerbils.
It’s always the cute ones you have to watch out for, isn’t it?
According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate data dating back to the 14th century contradicts the commonly held notion that European plague outbreaks were caused by a reservoir of disease-carrying fleas hosted by the continent’s rat population.
“For this, you would need warm summers, with not too much precipitation,” Nils Christian Stenseth, an author of the study, told the BBC. “… And we have looked at the broad spectrum of climatic indices, and there is no relationship between the appearance of plague and the weather.”
Instead, the fearsome “Black Death,” as the epidemic was known, seemed curiously tied to the climate in Asia. Analysis of 15 tree-ring records, which document yearly weather conditions, shows that Europe always experienced plague outbreaks after central Asia had a wet spring followed by a warm summer — terrible conditions for black rats, but ideal for Asia’s gerbil population. Those sneaky rodents and their bacteria-ridden fleas then hitched a ride to Europe via the Silk Road, arriving on the continent a few years later to wreak epidemiological havoc.
This isn’t the first time scientists have challenged a popular understanding of the disease. Last year, researchers examining plague DNA found in 25 14th-century skeletons said they found evidence that the disease was airborne rather than distributed via flea bites.
All of this new evidence explains why those people who took their families and moved out into isolated places survived the Plague and those who stayed in town, even in more sanitary conditions, often caught the plague and died. It appears also that much of history is going to have to be rewritten about the Plague. It is remarkable to study the influence the Plague had on European civilization. Over 100 million people died in the recurring outbreaks. Epidemics devoured populations and influenced the course of history.
So how do historians and scientists go about correcting history? How do they eradicate prevailing thinking that black rats and fleas were the 2 murderous culprits? How do Asian gerbils and fleas replace commonly held beliefs and become thought of continental exterminators of the human race? How does the disease mutate into an airborne disease rather than a disease associated with flea bites? These changes in our common belief system will take a lot of rethinking on the part of everyone who has had even a taste of world history in school. Old ideas are often met with resistance and will it will take generations to replace current thinking with newer, more accurate academic knowledge. Little Johnny will be scoffed at by his elders when he comes home and blames the pet gerbil for the deaths of millions.
For now, we will have new information to fight, scrap and quarrel about. The disparaged black rat will scurry off into oblivion and its image will be replaced in the minds of the educated by that deadly household pet, the gerbil, as a global mass murderer. Once again climate change will get the blame for causing an academic upheaval in the way we think.
It’s about time.
I did not realize that there was a difference between a rat and a gerbil – they are the same to me – and neither belong in the house.
Rats bigger, uglier, and not domesticated. Where do squirrels fit into your grand scheme of things?
The squirrels do not bother me so much anymore – they used to dig up my flowers but they have backed off the past few years. The dog might have something to do with that.
Corpses lying around the yard? Mine gnaw up things.
Don’t know about you all, but I am not going to give those rats a pass on anything — unless they are usefully employed in a research laboratory.
I guess its sort of amazing how they got it so wrong for so long.
Medicine really was primitive until very recently. Isn’t that really how medicine takes quantum leaps..via war?
Does this mean instead of saying, “Rats” when we’re exasperated, we should say, “Gerbils”? Doesn’t seem to have the same pizzazz!
Gerbils are just too warm and fuzzy to pack much of a punch.
Well, go figure. The media outlets up in New York City are all astir about rats in the subways having fleas which are carrying bubonic plague. You don’t know who to believe anymore. It’s like drinking coffee…..good for you; bad for you; good for you; bad for you……
So has anyone contracted bubonic plague or is this just media hype?
Sounds to me like they are focusing on a scientific study of the NYC rats and fleas done at Cornell …and Columbia, I think. I don’t believe there are any cases yet.
Reminds me of the time I was boarding an aircraft in the Philippines to travel to Saigon. A little Filipino doctor on duty in the waiting room looked at my records and suddenly exclaimed that I didn’t have a plague shot. Next thing I knew, I was in a back nursing station being shot up with something. Heck, I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a plague shot. I never thought about the plague at all outside of history classes, not even in the African slums and bush.