British experts say they have found London's lost Black Death graves

www.reuters.com...

Archaeologists, who say the find sheds new light on medieval England and its inhabitants, later found 12 more skeletons taking the total to 25. They will further excavate the site in July to see if more bodies are buried nearby.

Last year, they said the remains probably belonged to victims of the plague, which killed about a third of England's population following its outbreak in 1348. Limited records suggest up to 50,000 victims were buried in the cemetery in London's Farringdon district, one of two emergency burial sites.

On Sunday, they said DNA testing of some of the skeletons' teeth had uncovered traces of the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which was responsible for the Black Death plague, confirming that theory.

"Analysis of the Crossrail find has revealed an extraordinary amount of information allowing us to solve a 660 year mystery," said Jay Carver, Crossrail's lead archaeologist

Will this free a deadly , long sleeping pathogen, untouchable, unstoppable save for........

HUMBLEONE
Will this free a deadly , long sleeping pathogen, untouchable, unstoppable save for........

edit on 30-3-2014 by HUMBLEONE because: (no reason given)

edit on 30-3-2014 by HUMBLEONE because: I hereby admit my own ignorance.

I'm hoping that I as a native, will have immunity inherited from my forebears who survived the plague....crosses fingers.

But I'd be a tad worried if I was from somewhere that had never encountered the plague.

reply to post by HUMBLEONE


That is close to my first thought, did the black death disease die with the poor people it infected.

www.lordsandladies.org...

Important Facts about the Black Death
Interesting information and important facts and history of the disease:

Key Dates relating to the event: This terrible plague started in Europe in 1328 and lasted until 1351 although there were outbreaks for the next sixty years
Why was the disease called the Black Death? The disease was called the Black Death because one of the symptoms produced a blackening of the skin around the swellings. or buboes. The buboes were red at first, but later turned a dark purple, or black. When a victim's blood was let the blood that exuded was black, thick and vile smelling with a greenish scum mixed in it.
How the disease was spread: The Black Death was spread by fleas that were carried by rats or other small rodents
The spread of the Black Death followed all of the Trade Routes to every country
The Black Death of the Middle Ages was believed to have originated in the Gobi Desert
Key People relating to the event: Nearly one third of the population of died - about 200 million people in Europe
The 1328 outbreak in China caused the population to drop from 125 million to 90 million in just fifty years
7500 victims of the disease were dying every day
The Black Death in England raged from 1348-1350
Why the Black Death was important to the history of England: The population drop resulted in a higher value being placed on labour - the Peasants Revolt followed in 1381. Farming changed and the wool industry boomed. People became disillusioned with the church and its power and influence went into decline. This ultimately resulted in the English reformation

Is this one of those times when curiosity kills the cat?
Call me paranoid but once I figured out or speculated that those corpses were victims of the Black Death I would have packed up and called it quits.

reply to post by keenasbro


A possible Pandora's Box in the making? I hope not. One doesn't know if that particular strain of the plague could survive this long. I certainly don't.

I would hope the researchers move forward with caution, and CDC level expertise.

Des

My thoughts are with all of you - what the he** are they doing digging these people up? What do they hope to gain by this? If spread by flees and rats have they assured no fleas or rats will come into contact with what they are uncovering? If they have one sample of this they need to let these people RIP. I get the fascination with history but there is nothing we can do to change it so why take risks? A morbid fascination? Want an accurate count? Want to trace ancestors? None of justifies a possible reinfection.

HUMBLEONE
Will this free a deadly , long sleeping pathogen, untouchable, unstoppable save for........

Thought the same thing, those bodies should have been burned.
Let's hope there isn't an "unforseen accident"

Claims are from the research that "been airborne to spread so quickly"-source here, looking more of a risky operation hope they are protecting themselves. I'd suspect a combo of air and fleas, depending on area, from accounts of the plague.

Op, what's your take on it?

reply to post by dreamingawake


Thanks for the link.

Antibiotics can today prevent the disease from becoming pneumonic.
That is a reassuring statement.

I have to agree with you.

If it was airborne this could account for the bleeding of the lungs.
Would that also account for the painful swellings, at a guess (and that's what it is) in the armpits, legs etc, could be from fleas.

How it travelled so fast is pointing again to airborne, but them little critters (fleas) can get around and multiply fairly quickly.

Flea bites are typically red and inflamed. Overall symptoms include itchiness, and rashes. Fleas can spread rapidly and move between areas to include eyebrows, eyelashes, and pubic regions

en.wikipedia.org...

Yep hope they haven't opened up pandoras box

Painful swellings (buboes) of the lymph nodes
These swellings, or buboes, would appear in the armpits, legs, neck, or groin
A bubo was at first a red color. The bubo then turned a dark purple color, or black
Other symptoms of the Black Death included:
a very high fever
delirium
the victim begins to vomit
muscular pains
bleeding in the lungs
mental disorientation

reply to post by dreamingawake


Interesting. I found and posted this seperate thread a while back, www.abovetopsecret.com...

Why would they mess with this? History repeats again.

Black Death has been with us forever. It's still with us today and makes occasional outbreaks, most recently in Madagascar I believe which was pneumonic plague.

There are three variants of plague all caused by Y. pestis - Bubonic, Pneumonic, and Septicemic plague. What differs is how they infect you. Bubonic plague is the classic flea-born illness that infects the lymphatic system first causing the painful bubos from which the disease takes its name. It's the slowest killer. Pneumonic plague infects the lungs and can make the bacteria go airborne as victims cough out infected sputum on nearby people. Yum! It kills much quicker. Septicemic is the most virulent and is what happens when the infection goes straight into the bloodstream. It kills most quickly, and almost certainly accounts for those tales of people just falling over stone cold dead.

The plague can be treated with normal antibiotics, but of course, we are living in an era when antibiotics are becoming less and less effective for things all the time.

It isn't impossible that the Black Death was a special mutation of Y. pestis, but it's unlikely. People in the Middle Ages were already weakened and less healthy thank to the onset of the climate changes brought about by the onset of the Little Ice Age which brought widespread crop failures to Europe causing hunger and a generally colder, less pleasant climate for people to live in. That couple with weakened immune systems meant the population was ripe for illness.

You think that's scary? I wrote this thread 3 years ago...

Scientists crack the Black Death genetic code...

Now the British will have a go at it... sigh...

www.historic-uk.com...

These are the known plague pits in London, often in more affluent areas, and disguised as lovely local gardens. Wonder what those idiots building this new train system, ignored initially, to further the building work.

I think they have been forced to announce this for public health reasons.

reply to post by keenasbro


For those worried about the black death coming back: it has never left us totally. It crops up every year out in the western states. There was recently a case where a man caught it from either his cat or the mouse he pulled out of the cats throat that it was choking on. The cat accidentally bit him while he was trying to remove the mouse.After wards the cat still wasn't acting right and he ended up taking it to the vet and had it put down. Then he got sick and wasn't getting any better,his wife became highly alarmed when she saw the bulboes under his armpit and took him to a hospital where he was diagnosed with plague. The thing is that now it is not that worrisome as it once was due to antibiotics that we can fight the plague with.Therefore at this time,even if we did have an outbreak of the black death it could and would be quickly contained and treated.

There is a BBC doc, hosted by a british historian, micheal something, that followed the history of a English town from it's founding in the 1000's to the 20th century. I only saw a part of the episode dealing with 13th thru 15th century, but he spent a fair amount of time leading up to the plague. The thing that most caught my attention was the fact that some epidemic swept throught Britain before the plague. Between 1290 and 1320
Britain's population fell by over 60%, from around 6,000,000 to 2,000,000.
Whole towns and districts were abandoned, and contemporary accounts talk of entire villiages dying off, with no one to bury the dead, that were burned down and forgotten.

I think this makes for interesting history and something to follow! I'm not concerned about old pathogens. The plague is an annual visitor to more than one area of the world. You can watch the cases appear in small numbers, but regularly on more than one epidemic tracking service. Thankfully, we don't have the squalor and conditions of 14th century Europe for it to thrive in.

I love filling in the blanks of history though. So much left blank...so much that is critical for context.

It was definitely air born, remember your childhood song...

ring around the rosies (religious reference)
pocket full of posies (they used the pettels of this flower to cover their mouths)
ashes ashes (they burned the bodies)
we all fall down (everyone thought they were going to die)

my brother told me that in a graveyard near me there is only one person buried there that had the plague, on the grave is a skull and crossbone, il have a proper look when im a bit better. the odd thing was, i was doing some ghost hunting in that graveyard last year and was taking pictures, got home and uploaded them and on one i actually have a skull in the picture, thats how that story came about.