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Cited by 122Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites researchOttoman and Turkish StudiesEurasian Exchange Networks

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

The Four Black Deaths

Green, Monica H.·2020·The American Historical Review
DOI 10.1093/ahr/rhaa511
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Abstract

The Black Death, often called the largest pandemic in human history, is conventionally defined as the massive plague outbreak of 1346 to 1353 c.e. that struck the Black Sea and Mediterranean, extended into the Middle East, North Africa, and western Europe, and killed as much as half the total population of those regions. Yet genetic approaches to plague’s history have established that Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of plague, suddenly diverged in Central Asia at some point before the Black Death, splitting into four new branches—a divergence geneticists have called the “Big Bang.” Drawing on a “biological archive” of genetic evidence, I trace the bacterial descendants of the Big Bang proliferation, comparing that data to historical human activities in and around the area of plague’s emergence. The Mongols, whose empire emerged in 1206, unwittingly moved plague through Central Eurasia in the thirteenth, not the fourteenth, century. Grain shipments that the Mongols brought with them to several sieges, including the siege of Baghdad, were the most likely mechanism of transmission. The fourteenth century plague outbreaks represent local spillover events out of the new plague reservoirs seeded by the military campaigns of the thirteenth century.

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Metadata

Authors
Green, M. H.
Corresponding author
Green, Monica H.
ORCID
Green, Monica H.
Venue
The American Historical Review
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2020-12
Volume
125
Issue
5
Pages
1601-1631
ISSN
  • 0002-8762 (ISSN-L)
  • 1937-5239
DOI
10.1093/ahr/rhaa511
OpenAlex
W3117304502
Cited by
122
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 28 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 2
FWCI
1.94
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model (vor)
Locations
The American Historical Review (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Ottoman and Turkish Studies
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Eurasian Exchange Networks
Keywords
Black Death, Yersinia pestis, plague transmission, Mongol Empire, Central Asia, grain delivery, genetic epidemiology

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