Plagues how many

People died by the thousands, and the piles of bodies on the streets grew so large that convicts were conscripted to dispose of them.

By then, it had killed roughly , people. People in quarantine in Karachi during the outbreak. The first two major plague pandemics began with the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death. The disease traversed the globe over the next several decades, and by the beginning of the 20th century, infected rats traveling on steamships had carried it to all six inhabited continents. The worldwide outbreak would eventually claim some 15 million lives before petering out in the s.

Most of the devastation took place in China and India, but there were also scattered cases from South Africa to San Francisco. In , a Hong Kong-based doctor named Alexandre Yersin identified the bacillus Yersinia pestis as the cause of the disease. A few years later, another physician finally confirmed that bites from rat fleas were the main way the infection spread to humans. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. The Plague of Justinian. Recommended for you. Volcanic eruptions could also explain the several days of darkness — which means nine plagues are accounted for. Trevisanato also found an ancient Egyptian account of the children of aristocrats lying dead in public and archaeological data matching the account.

He believes that, amid all this destruction, firstborn children could have been sacrificed out of desperation, in the hopes that such a meaningful sacrifice would lead their gods to stop punishing them. This theory — put forth by scientists like John S. Just as in the volcano theory, frogs then leapt out looking for food, and died.

Without frogs to eat the insects, the pests proliferated and feasted on corpses, a feeding frenzy for flies and locusts. The paper argued that the lice could have been a type of insect called culicoides, which can carry two diseases that could explain the livestock deaths: African horse sickness and Bluetongue. The boils on humans could have been caused by glanders, an airborne bacterial disease spread by flies or tainted meat.

In this theory the darkness is coincidentally caused by a sandstorm. The darkness would have left the crops — well, whatever crops were left after the other problems — moldy, and the mold could have produced airborne toxins that might explain widespread childhood death.

This addendum to the algae theory points out that, for red algae to flourish in the first place, there needs to be slow, sludgy, warm water. In , research on stalagmites —elongated mineral deposits that form out of calcium in precipitation — suggested that there had been a dry period towards the end of the rule of Pharaoh Ramses II. That change would have dried up the Nile and significantly slowed down the flow of water, according to paleoclimatologist Augusto Mangini.

Some estimates put the death toll as high as , people. The Greek historian Thucydides B. What exactly this epidemic was has long been a source of debate among scientists; a number of diseases have been put forward as possibilities, including typhoid fever and Ebola.

Many scholars believe that overcrowding caused by the war exacerbated the epidemic. Sparta's army was stronger, forcing the Athenians to take refuge behind a series of fortifications called the "long walls" that protected their city. Despite the epidemic, the war continued on, not ending until B. When soldiers returned to the Roman Empire from campaigning, they brought back more than the spoils of victory.

The Antonine Plague, which may have been smallpox, laid waste to the army and may have killed over 5 million people in the Roman empire, wrote April Pudsey, a senior lecturer in Roman History at Manchester Metropolitan University, in a paper published in the book "Disability in Antiquity," Routledge, Related: Plague doctors: Separating medical myths from facts.

Many historians believe that the epidemic was first brought into the Roman Empire by soldiers returning home after a war against Parthia. After A. Christianity became increasingly popular in the time after the plague occurred. Named after St. Cyprian, a bishop of Carthage a city in Tunisia who described the epidemic as signaling the end of the world , the Plague of Cyprian is estimated to have killed 5, people a day in Rome alone.

In , archaeologists in Luxor found what appears to be a mass burial site of plague victims. Their bodies were covered with a thick layer of lime historically used as a disinfectant. Archaeologists found three kilns used to manufacture lime and the remains of plague victims burned in a giant bonfire. Experts aren't sure what disease caused the epidemic. The Byzantine Empire was ravaged by the bubonic plague, which marked the start of its decline. The plague reoccurred periodically afterward.

The plague is named after the Byzantine Emperor Justinian reigned A. Under his reign, the Byzantine Empire reached its greatest extent, controlling territory that stretched from the Middle East to Western Europe.

Justinian constructed a great cathedral known as Hagia Sophia "Holy Wisdom" in Constantinople modern-day Istanbul , the empire's capital. Justinian also got sick with the plague but survived. However, his empire gradually lost territory in the time after the plague struck. The Black Death traveled from Asia to Europe, leaving devastation in its wake.

Some estimates suggest that it wiped out over half of Europe's population. It was caused by a strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis that is likely extinct today and was spread by fleas on infected rodents. The bodies of victims were buried in mass graves.

The plague changed the course of Europe's history. With so many dead, labor became harder to find, bringing about better pay for workers and the end of Europe's system of serfdom. Studies suggest that surviving workers had better access to meat and higher-quality bread. The lack of cheap labor may also have contributed to technological innovation. The infection that caused the cocoliztli epidemic was a form of viral hemorrhagic fever that killed 15 million inhabitants of Mexico and Central America.

Among a population already weakened by extreme drought, the disease proved to be utterly catastrophic. A recent study that examined DNA from the skeletons of victims found that they were infected with a subspecies of Salmonella known as S. Enteric fever can cause high fever, dehydration and gastrointestinal problems and is still a major health threat today. The American Plagues are a cluster of Eurasian diseases brought to the Americas by European explorers.

These illnesses, including smallpox, contributed to the collapse of the Inca and Aztec civilizations. Another Spanish force led by Francisco Pizarro conquered the Incas in The Spanish took over the territories of both empires.