A new study offers a novel theory on how the plague came to establish a foothold in Europe in the 14th century and kill millions: Researchers blame a volcanic eruption, or a series of them. As NBC News reports, the study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment lays out a chain reaction of sorts: An eruption, or possibly multiple eruptions, in 1345 led to lower temperatures and vastly diminished harvests, per the BBC. That, in turn, forced Italian city-states including Florence and Venice to import grain from abroad, and that grain came with plague-infested fleas, according to the theory.
"They couldn't have an idea of what danger was there," said Martin Bauch, a study co-author and historian at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Germany. Researchers pieced together evidence from tree rings, ice cores, and historical records to establish a timeline: a marked cooling period and Mediterranean famine from 1345 to 1347 coincided with the pandemic's emergence. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica showed a significant sulfur spike in 1345, suggesting a major tropical eruption.
Tree rings from the same period displayed rare "blue rings," signaling plant stress from cold. Contemporary accounts from across Eurasia also reported dimmer skies and increased cloudiness. While the study's authors couldn't identify an exact volcano, they argue the eruption's fallout accelerated the plague's spread via trade routes, particularly as Italian merchants turned to the Black Sea for grain when other sources ran dry. If true, the theory overturns a darker one about the plague's origins in Europe, notes the Washington Post. By that earlier account, a Mongol army catapulted bodies infested with the disease over the walls surrounding the port city of Caffa on the Crimean Peninsula.
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