Humans were to blame for the spread of the Black Death plague rather than rats, a new study has revealed.
History has always attributed the cause of the plague which killed between 75 and 200 million people in Europe during the 1300s to a bacteria found on rats.
But new information discovered by researchers suggests that it was actually caused by “ectoparasites” commonly known as body lice and human fleas spreading the disease from human to human.
Mortality data from nine plague outbreaks recorded in Europe between the 14th and 19th centuries allowed researchers to track how the plague developed.
They created models to compare the likelihood of the disease being spread by rats, airborne transmission and fleas and lice on humans and clothes.
Researchers found that seven of the nine cases showed that there was a closer resemblance between the human model and the outbreak compared to the other two potential factors.
Scientists said: “While it is commonly assumed that rats and their fleas spread plague during the Second Pandemic there is little historical and archaeological support for such a claim.
"Here, we show that human ectoparasites, like body lice and human fleas, might be more likely than rats to have caused the rapidly developing epidemics in pre-Industrial Europe."
The plague was wiped out of Britain in 1666 but in some parts of the world it still remains prevalent. The three most endemic countries are Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Peru.
The findings were published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science.
