The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[authun]

Infected people can spread the disease as well, besides rodents.

Hi Vortigern,

Yes, I said that. Anything which will act as a host carrier to the flea can spread plague.

It can also be transmitted by handling an infected person/animal. Again though, as the hosts die, the spread of the bacteria is limited by the movement of people. No contact stops the spread.

The oriental rat flea can host the disease without the disease killing it off. Consequently, it can remain in the population. This is not the case with humans or animals.

As the northern european climate is hostile to this type of flea, the only host where the disease can survive dies. The primary source is then effectively eradicted. This then leaves only the infected hosts which will eventually die themselves . The only way the disease can continue to spread is by infected hosts infecting those who are not infected before they die. If this happens, the disease continues to spread. If there is no contact, the spread stops.

The only caveat to this is that the bacteria can survive, without a host, in places like rat burrows. This is the most likley cause of recurrent outbreaks.

Plague has been known to rage through Norway in winter - apparently, temperatures do not hold back the plague.

Pneumonic plague is more easily transmitted, sneezing for example. Its mortality rate is much higher than bubonic plague. The Black Death contained Bubonic, Pneumonic and Septicaemic plagues. It's important to know which one we are talking about and it's a common mistake to equate the Black Death solely with bubonic plague.

Even so, flea borne bubonic plague could have entered Norway via the ports of the western coast and spread via the movement of people/animals, even in winter. The important point is that the fleas, the only hosts not to die of the disease, won't breed. As the other hosts, the humans and animals, die, at some point we reach an equilibrium whereby enough of them die to stop spreading the disease.

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.

This is not my hypothesis. You can find it in many publications.

Robert Gottfried, 'The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe', argues that the Justinian plague was limited, probably by the lack of a significant trade infrastructure north of the alps during the dark ages.

A paper entitled "Climate, Archeology, History, and the Arthurian Tradition: A Multiple-Source Study of Two Dark-Age Puzzles" by Elizabeth Jones in Joel D. Gunn's (ed.): The Years without Summer: Tracing A.D. 536 and its Aftermath, specifically deals with Britain. Jones' hypothesis is that disease attributable to the climate shift selectively decimated the Celtic British population in the mid 6th century, thereby facilitating the Anglo-Saxon conquest of most of Britain between 550 and 600 AD.

Jones cites Davis (1982) and others "There is general
agreement that the plagues struck the Britons hard without affecting
the Anglo-Saxon populations to any extent.", though I haven't read that myself.

Others such as Malcolm Todd, 'Famosa Pestis' and Britain in the Fifth Century have written about it too.

Besides, the amount of trade between Irish/British and the Med is not shown to reach such volumes either.

Again there is a lot written about the large volumes of BI amphorae sherds from Tintagel and the trade in olive oil and wine with Tintagel, the western British and Irish ports.

We're taliking about the Justinian Plague, right?

Yes.

Is there even proof that it reached Britain?

Only contemporary accounts:

Annales Cambriae:

547 The great death [plague] in which Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd died.

Annals of Ulster:

U549.3 A great mortality in which these rested: Finnia moccu Telduib, Colam, descendant of Crimthann, Mac Táil of Cell Cuilinn, Sinchell son of Cenannán, abbot of Cell Achaid Druimfhata, and Colum of Inis Celtra.

U556.2 A great mortality this year, i.e. in chron Chonaill (in buide Chonaill).

It's not proof in itself of course and would need to be firmly tied in to trade routes to present a picture of the Justinian plague travelling via those trade routes into Wales and Ireland, but the dates appear to tally with the spread of the disease from the eastern med.

Jones cites archaeological evidence for disease of some type at
British Cirencester in the form of "unburied bodies lying in the
streets of an abandoned town", presumably she is referring to the bodies in the street ditch. She reports that there are records of British refugees who came to Brittany expressly to escape contagion. I haven't seen the referencesbut assume she refers to The Book of Llandav telling how St. Teilo sailed to Brittany to escape the Plague.

best

Harry Amphlett