Plague volcano

 

OK, this was interesting. Why did the Great Plague reach Europe when it did (1347)? 

New research suggests that the reason was a severe famine in southern Europe caused by volcanic eruptions, perhaps in Africa. The Italian city-states activated their sophisticated trade networks to obtain grain and lifted a previous embargo on trading with the Mongols north of the Black Sea. Unfortunately, the grain from that particular part of the world was infected by fleas acting as a vector for Yersinia pestis. The rest is history. 

Note that Anton doesn´t mention the usual cannard that the Mongols started the pandemic by catapulting infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa...

In other words: globalization leads to more pandemics. Which doesn´t mean that global trade networks are necessarily bad. It does mean that we have to develop medical science (hint hint)...