The appearance of the Black Death, or Yersinia Pestis, wasn’t really seen until relatively recently in human history. Early humans were mainly hunter-gatherers and didn’t stay in one location for too long. Because of this humans didn’t have time to wallow in filth or fecal matter. With this being the case, the population was generally smaller and people were relatively scattered. Humans were to smaller in number to carry widespread disease, and the most common ailments were parasites like worms that infected the body. With the relatively recent discovery of agriculture, humans began to start staying in one place rather than moving around. This was the first time really that people could start having larger populations, and thus the ability to start spreading diseases that could move from human to human. This was more or less the same for zoonotic diseases that spread with the domestication of animals.

With the growth of civilizations around the world came a growth of filth and the concern of what to do with fecal matter, this started to get large amounts of people sick. This was the kick off for deadly diseases like the Justinian Plague, the black death, and the final outbreak in the 19th century. This had a wide reaching affect as well due to communication between different civilizations through trade, and through diplomatic meetings for land. This is how the black death spread from Asia all the way to Western Europe. Though for the most part, even with civilizations around, these disease were relatively common bacteria around the world, just certain triggers are what set them off in the end, such as climate change, causing mass death like the black death.

In todays world, new diseases and plagues can cause a massive problem with todays society. The advent of quick travel methods such as public transpertation and air travel, diseases can spread much faster over a much wider area. An example of this was an outbreak of SARS in 2003 in Hong Kong that infected hundreds of people in mulitple countries due to air travel. Thing like hand shakes and other cultural customs can also lead to the wide spread of diseases. In other words, even with the extreme medical advances that have occured within the last century, if a new form of the Black Death, or a new deadly disease that has never been seen before, it can cause havoc on a massive scale.

Help Recieved: Class lectures, Chapter 1 powerpoint

Thomas Hayden Gann