Abstract
The Black Death, generally thought to be bubonic plague, spread into Europe from the Caspian Sea, brought by Mongols attacking the city of Kaffa in 1346. Carried by fleas on ship rats, it was ferried to ports throughout Europe. Over the next seven years it killed about a third of the population.
The transmission of an infectious disease in the Middle Ages is fairly predictable. While ships could transport the plague over long distances, its spread across the European continent from the Mediterranean ports resembles the steady advance of an ink blot. Human mobility was then very low: most people barely ventured a few miles beyond their hometown, and so infection advanced more or less village by village.
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Ball, P. (2012). Spreading It Around: Mobility, Disease and Epidemics. In: Why Society is a Complex Matter. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29000-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29000-8_6
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