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History Forum / General / General Topics / June 2007Black Plague - an "Aha" moment
I've always heard that the Black Death, bubonic plague, originated in Central Asia, spread by land to India, then by ship to the Near East and Europe. We know that the Huns and Mongols and Tatars inhabited Central Asia in great numbers when plague was on the move. Although nomadic, we know that each of these groups gathered periodically to choose leaders and settle disputes. Any communicable disease would have spread like wildfire at a kuriltai. So i always wondered: why didn't the plague ravage the Central Asian armies of the Khans and Timurlane? Why were tens of thousands of soldiers able to keep fighting year after year, in close contact with each other, when the plague was killing half of the people in other spots around Eurasia? The "aha" moment came when i learned that the fleas which carry the bubonic plague bacteria avoid horses. That type of flea loves rats, and will bite dogs and humans in the absence of a nice rat, but they avoid horses like... well, they avoid horses like the plague. The Hun and Mongol armies were cavalry armies, so they had horses everywhere. That also explains a seige tactic they used: tossing plagued carcasses over the walls. They didn't care, because their horses kept the plague away. Inside the beseiged city, the horses would already have been butchered for rations, so this prototype of biowar was doubly effective. Not a great revelation, just an 'aha' which proves that global shifts of political power can come from something as simple as a flea's dislike for the smell of horse urine. SL On Jun 16, 2:21 am, Scaly Lizard <scalyliz...@nospampleaseyho.com> wrote: > I've always heard that the Black Death, bubonic > plague, originated in Central Asia, spread by land [quoted text clipped - 35 lines] > > SL tho horse urine and other chevaux stuff do seem to attract gadflies, which i would not know anything about, because i would prefer to call myself kibbitzer hmmm, the urine angle is interesting: as the next time a bubonic plague breaks out, then load a tanker (airplane, railroad, truck) with the natural u by-product produced in blugrass kentucky and... <more horse shitt/kibbitzer/gadfly thinking> >On Jun 16, 2:21 am, Scaly Lizard <scalyliz...@nospampleaseyho.com> >wrote: [quoted text clipped - 46 lines] >with the natural u by-product produced in blugrass kentucky and... ><more horse shitt/kibbitzer/gadfly thinking> Fortunately it's much easier nowadays. No tankers needed. Americans like cats, and cats kill rats. Medieval Europeans disliked cats, so they died enmasse. If you happen to find a time machine, you can also bring this simple cure back with you: lance the buboles, wash sheets and hands with soap and clean water, and sterilize your lancets with alcohol. Voila, mortality drops from 80% to 30% and you get a town square named after you. Of course, if your name is "cohen," then they probably dislike you more than they distrust cats, so "oh well" on that plan. SL On Jun 21, 1:32 am, Scaly Lizard <scalyliz...@nospampleaseyho.com> wrote: > >On Jun 16, 2:21 am, Scaly Lizard <scalyliz...@nospampleaseyho.com> > >wrote: [quoted text clipped - 62 lines] > > - Show quoted text - re kitties and "cohen" there were ghetto "gotto" cats, as we bought a painting-print while visiting the venice ghetto, because we like cats <venice by the way by itself makes an expensive euro vacation in europe sufficient- necessary, and it's not totally run by disney nor do they sing "small world" ad nauseam as far as i know> in the france cultural n.g, two or so years ago, apparently a youngish poster of holland posts to me that "cohen" is sort of traditional cuss- word (insult used in informal mass folk culture, which is certainly not unique to merely them relatively liberal netherlands), and simultaneously morally condemns israel, rhetorically questioning why israel should exist i thanked him for making the modern-Herzl zionist case to be fair, if complex, i should note the (popularly elected ?) mayor of amsterdam has been a actual-literal "mayor cohen" >On Jun 21, 1:32 am, Scaly Lizard <scalyliz...@nospampleaseyho.com> >wrote: [quoted text clipped - 86 lines] >i should note the (popularly elected ?) mayor of amsterdam has been a >actual-literal "mayor cohen" Ahh, these salad days. In 1355 it was gruel days instead. SL >I've always heard that the Black Death, bubonic >plague, originated in Central Asia, spread by land [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >other, when the plague was killing half of the people >in other spots around Eurasia? By an odd coincidence, I am reading a text on the Black Death even as this is posted. And, I seem to recall that Timurlane himself died of the plague. Could be bad memory, right. Even more interestingly (to me), note the map on the link below that shows areas (relatively) unaffected by Y. Pestis. Makes me think something other than horse piss may have been a more important factor. Some suggest the isolation of those areas made them safer, but that does not seem right either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_death >The "aha" moment came when i learned that the >fleas which carry the bubonic plague bacteria avoid [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > >SL >>I've always heard that the Black Death, bubonic >>plague, originated in Central Asia, spread by land [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_death I think you're right about Timurlane, but they called all sorts of diseases "plague" back then. He might just as easily have died from rheumatic fever. The map makes sense to me. The unaffected area in modern Poland were the places which had been repeatedly conquered by Central Asian horsefolk, starting with the Huns in the 400's. Add the Alps and Pyrenees where rats were scarce, and there you have that map. The message i posted was on reflection about a documentary i saw on a plague outbreak in Marseilles in 1721-1722. Art of the time shows the bodies of poor people and dogs, but the higher social ranks are shown healthy, on horseback. If you're interested, check out "Peoples And Plagues" by William McNeill (1976). I addition to discussing Black Death, he also makes a good case for Sleeping Sickness borne by the tsetse fly preventing human civilization from advancing in subsaharan Africa. Also has a really good section on the social effects of malaria. SL >The map makes sense to me. The unaffected area in modern >Poland were the places which had been repeatedly conquered [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >Africa. Also has a really good section on the social effects of >malaria. My local library shows a copy of Plagues and Peoples by William H. McNeill, so I have asked them to hold it for me. I assume that is the same text, I mean. The book I was reading is The Great Mortality by John Kelly. An interesting author, so I plan to read some more of his stuff. Anyway, I should have finished my reading before mentioning the areas that seemingly escaped the devastation - Kelly suggests that the data from those areas are merely lacking, and they got zapped like everyone else. He also suggests a partial immunity can be gained, which could address the nomadic horsemen's escape. They were hit earlier & often from the same Y. Pestis bug, that is. Could also be they just moved around so much that the black death could just find no foothold? Dunno. Here is the little beastie's favorite host, by the way - rats and humans being secondary targets: http://www.marmotburrow.ucla.edu/sibirica.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot >>The map makes sense to me. The unaffected area in modern >>Poland were the places which had been repeatedly conquered [quoted text clipped - 36 lines] > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmot Cool! Very fun to find out something i didn't know, so thanks. Yes, that's the right book the library is holding, and you're correct about immunity. The same plague revisited Marseilles in 1723, and the people dug mass graves expecting it to kill 50% of the populace off again... but the survivors of the 1722 pestilence were semi-immune and the mortality rate was much lower. SL |
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