EnvironmentEurope
The Justinianic Plague
The first known outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe
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The outbreak coincided with a cold period triggered by volcanic eruptions in 536, sometimes called the worst year to be alive. Justinian's attempt to reconquer the western empire collapsed in its wake. How many died is disputed — recent scholarship has revised the dramatic estimates sharply downwards.
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A plague arrived with the grain ships from Egypt and ravaged Constantinople. Contemporaries wrote that ten thousand died a day. It is the same bacterium that later caused the Black Death — identified in DNA from graves.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org