Before Yersinia pestis devastated Europe in the Middle Ages, the bacteria ravaged the Bronze Age for nearly two millennia.

The Black Death was one of the most infamous pandemic events in history. It spread across Asia and Europe, decimating a third of the continent’s population during the Middle Ages. The cause was plague ...

New research shows ancient plague may have spread through livestock, not fleas, based on DNA from a 4,000-year-old sheep.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The Black Death did not begin with disease alone. Volcanoes, hunger, and trade opened the door. (CREDIT: Mark Gridley) When the ...

For the first time in history, scientists were able to retrieve DNA of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of the plague, ...

During the Black Plague, death came so fast that proper Christian burials became impossible. In Siena, mass graves filled the city as few priests were available and families were forced to bury loved ...

A spike in gravestones from 1338 in Kyrgyzstan led historian Philip Slavin to theorize that the Black Death may have begun years before it swept through Europe. Inscriptions mentioning “pestilence” ...

Infection was spread to man through bites from rat fleas, causing deadly bubonic plague and a highly contagious strain of pneumonia. Mr Simpson said the bacterium responsible - Yersinia pestis - which ...

The microbe responsible for the Black Death plagues was infecting Bronze Age humans more than 3,000 years earlier than the pandemics it is most notorious for. Early forms of the bacteria, Yersinia ...

The new research about the Black Death was published earlier this month Getty Scientists suggest in a new study that the Black Death may have been triggered by one or more volcanic eruptions The ...

The infamous Black Death—a pandemic that killed as many as one third to one half of Europeans within just a few years—may have been aided in its devastation by an unknown volcanic eruption. Martin ...