What a chain of events during the Little Ice Age (about 1300 to about 1850 CE)!
"... These lines of evidence all pointed to violent volcanic eruptions around 1345, which would have dumped sulfur and ash into the atmosphere and caused a wet chill across Europe and the Mediterranean.
Written records showed that these weather conditions, in turn, caused simultaneous crop failures in Spain, France, Italy, Egypt, and the Levant. To prevent famine, Italian port cities like Venice, Pisa, and Genoa used their trade connections with the Mongols of the Golden Horde to import grain from the Black Sea Region in 1347. Unfortunately, the grain likely contained fleas infected with Yersinia pestis—and thus the plague jumped to rodents, followed by humans. ..."
From the abstract:
"The first wave of the second plague pandemic, the Black Death, claimed much of Europe’s human population in just a few years after 1347 CE. While it is accepted that the causative bacterium Yersinia pestis originated from wildlife rodent populations in central Asia and reached Europe via the Black Sea region, reasons for the timing, spread and virulence of the onset of the Black Death are still debated.
Here, we argue that a post-volcanic climate downturn and trans-Mediterranean famine from 1345–1347 CE forced the Italian maritime republics of Venice, Genoa and Pisa to activate their well-established supply network and import grain from the Mongols of the Golden Horde around the Sea of Azov in 1347 CE.
This climate-driven change in long-distance grain trade not only prevented large parts of Italy from starvation but also introduced the plague bacterium to Mediterranean harbours and fueled its rapid dispersal across much of Europe."
Fig. 1: Volcanic forcing and summer cooling.
Fig. 3: Grain trade and plague dispersal.
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