Bubonic Plague

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Recommended: The black death research paper

Subject: What is the most important turning point in history?

I have been set with the task to be able to say what I think is the most important turning point in history in one thousand and five hundred words. I will be discussing the Black Death which is most important in my opinion. Although the British reformations and Industrial Revolutions are also an important turning point, I have ruled it out because I do not think that it is important as these.

On the one hand, The Black Death is an important turning point in history due to the terror and consequential effects it had left behind. The Black Death has been one of the most harmful pandemics in the history of humankind, killing an estimated number of around 75 to 200 million people throughout history, whilst peaking in Europe throughout 1348-50 AD. Although people have been debating about what the real cause of the Black Death is, a scientific journal called PLoS Pathogens publish a paper showing that the pathogen responsible for the Black Death in northern and southern Europe is the Yersinia pestis bacterium (Originally called Pasteurella pestis, the organism had been renamed in 1967 to Yersinia pestis), which had most likely caused many plagues.

The Black Death is estimated to have been arisen in the dry plains of Central Asia, whereupon it had spread along the Silk Road, getting to Crimea in 1346. From Crimea, it was caught by Oriental rat fleas which had been living on black rats that regularly went on merchant ships. Spreading through Europe and the Mediterranean, the Black Death has been estimated to have infected and killed about 30-60% of Europe’s population. The Black Death had made the world population go down from 450 million all the way down to 350 million thro...

... middle of paper ...

...therefore leading to the plague.

British Bacterologist J.F.D. Shrewsbury noted that the rate of mortality in rural areas were having anomalies with the bubonic plague from today, therefore he thought contemporary accounts were too extreme. Researchers cannot find out enough information about the Black Death due to the age of it and due to most of the work being achieved in England, another reason the Black Death is unclear is that the death rate might have been bigger or smaller since there was no census taken between the time of the Domesday Book and the year 1377.

In conclusion, although there are many other turning points in history, the Black Death interests me most of all because of how sociality changed-more jobs were available, more people went to religion for help- and also the amount of shock and terror it left behind.

Essay Written By
Adrians Adolfi

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