They’re referring to the bubonic plague (aka the Black Death) which didn’t arrive in Europe until the 14th century. And yes, we would habe heard of it before then because it was highly contagious.
Comment on Year of our Lord 1195
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoYou can die of the plague today. It wasn’t constrained by dates, big flare ups in society happened and they were the ones that went down in history books, but people died of the disease outside those years too.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Please see the post I offered in response that shows research indicating Yersina Pestis was killing humans in Europe and Asia well before the mass plagues.
Damage@feddit.it 3 weeks ago
I didn’t say that’s not possible, I said that’s weird, just like dying of plague today would be.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why would it be weird?
It would only be weird today in a modern western country because of the rarity and available medical treatment being unsuccessful. It was not any different historically from other diseases centuries ago that lacked treatment or understanding. There was nothing weird about it.
fristislurper@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Because the plague specifically did not reach Europe before 1347 as far as we know. Now of course there could be plague in Europe before this, and we modern people don’t know about it because of poor recordkeeping or something. But it would be a bit surprising. Therefore: weird.
fatalicus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Plague of Justinian was a pandemic of bubonic plague in Europe (among others) in the 6th century.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4644222/
I’ll offer that humans were dying of Yersina Pestis in Europe before the well-known outbreaks of The Plague.
x00z@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Maybe dysentery would have been better.