The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[Robert Vermaat]

Please explain why you think this would be the case. Were the rats afraid of the Germanic language?

The reason is that the fleas kill the rats as well. It's not an airborne disease. Plague is spread by movement of the rats, via trade for example, or by humans or via the movement of farm animals. In all cases there are limits to the distance plague can travel overland as the host carriers die. A sort of grim equilibrium is reached.

Hi Harry,
Plague has been known to rage through Norway in winter - apparently, temperatures do not hold back the plague. Infected people can spread the disease as well, besides rodents.

So you're practically suggesting that the Germanic speakers in Britain and elsewhere were not/less affected by plague because they were completely isolated from traders with the Mediterranean and thus escaped infection.

I can't agree with that hypothesis - did they not trade with other people who traded with the Mediterranean (such as Franks and Goths)? Besides, the amount of trade between Irish/British and the Med is not shown to reach such volumes either.

We're taliking about the Justinian Plague, right? Is there even proof that it reached Britain?