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What pathogen caused the Black Death?
DNA analysis of skeletons from 14th-century plague pits in London and elsewhere, published 2010–2011 by Johannes Krause's team, definitively identified *Yersinia pestis* as the pathogen — ending centuries of medical debate. The bacterium is transmitted primarily by fleas on rats and is still extant. About 2,000 plague cases are reported worldwide every year, mostly in Madagascar, the DRC, and Peru.
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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.
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- 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?
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