How did the Bubonic Plague (or the Black Death) start?

Question

Please tell me all the myths/stories you know because it seems that no one knows for sure how the Black Death started. Please include sources - websites, books, anything.

Answer 1

Years ago I read the Masque of the Red Death for a literature class in school. From their I became interested in plagues/epidemics such as influenza, small pox, etc., etc.
What I can remember, this was before the Internet - I had to look for answers in an Encyclopedia Britannica at my high school's library, was that most agreed the Bubonic plague started with trade ships hauling grain. Aboard the ships, rats, who had followed their food source - grain, would hitch a ride across the ocean to whatever country the ship docked in. When the ship would hit port for delivery, the rats, who were ill form the disease, would run from the hustle and bustle of unloading the ship and out into the city the ship was docked in. From there the rats would spread the disease when they would get into eateries and private dwellings as they searched for food, leaving infected fleas, who'd been feeding on the rats blood, behind. The fleas in turn would bite people (anyone who has had a cat that got fleas knows that fleas bite people on the ankle) and hitch a ride on their clothing and their pets. As people came down with the disease they had never encountered or knew how it was spread; they did not realize they were carrying around infected fleas and that they had unknowingly been spreading the illness everywhere they went.

That's the usual consensus of how the Black Plague was spread so rapidly and unknowingly.

Answer 2

The origin of the Bubonic Plague can only be hypothesized. There are many theories, but we do not know for certain where it all started. One theory that I've read believe the plague was spread by the Mongolians as they set out to conquer much of Asia and Eastern Europe. In the Gobi desert, there is a creature call Marmots which the Mongolians see as a delicacy. The interesting thing about Marmots is that the plague bacteria can still found in them and no amount of cooking short of burning the carcass to ashes can destroy the plague.bacteria. Another theory is that the rats from ships trading between the far east and eastern Europe spread the disease from various port cities.

Answer 3

In plain terms the cities of Europe were a pig pen--Throw your trash out into the streets--Houses close together and filthy--throw your human waste out into the streets and other filthy conditions. So this attracted the rats which carried the disease ridden fleas and other vermin. The rats invaded the homes and the fleas bit the inhabitants of those homes and the Plague began. The houses being so close together it spread like wildfire and the deaths began and the corpses began to stack up adding to the mess.

Answer 4

The Black Death, 1348.
Coming out of the East, the Black Death reached the shores of Italy in the spring of 1348 unleashing a rampage of death across Europe unprecedented in recorded history. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plague.htm

These two web sites have opposite views of the origin of the nursery rhyme, "Ring a Ring a Rosie".
http://www.famousquotes.me.uk/nursery_rhymes/ring_a_ring_o_rosies.htm
http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp

Answer 5

the bubonic plague was caused by the enterobacteria yersinia pestis. you can look this up and more info on the wikipedia encyclapedia site

Answer 6

It's a disease that rats get and was carried to humans by fleas