Denials of a normal presence and crucial role of rats in plague epidemics

The black rat was the only rat in Europe before the early 1700s. The conventional view on historical plague epidemics is that they were rat-and-rat-flea-borne. In the first edition of this book, the epidemiological analysis of the data reflecting the spread of the Black Death across Europe and adjacent regions of the Old World showed patterns of the epidemiological process that only were compatible with rat-and-rat-flea-borne bubonic plague. The analysis of all available material on the spread of the Black Death at the time was concordant with the conventional view, also as presented in the standard works on plague. The data on the spread of the Black Death available twenty years later and presented below provide maximum empirical evidence for inferences to the epidemiology of the Black Death, the mechanisms and dynamics of the transmission and dissemination of plague contagion.

The highly disparate and mutually incompatible alternative theories to the conventional rat-and-rat-flea-borne epidemiology of historical plague are quite consistently based on the same denial of the wide and usual presence of rats in medieval Europe. It is disappointing that the thorough discussion of their counter-arguments and the competent syntheses of finds of skeletal remains of black rats can be ignored or misrepresented. This also means that another endeavour to present the full evidence and discuss their arguments will not serve any purpose and this book is not the right forum for it. Readers who wish to consider for themselves all the skeletal evidence on the historical presence of rats and the inferences it supports can relate to the syntheses of the skeletal material mentioned below and referred to in notes 65–71. In this chapter, only the deniers’ main arguments, some main features of the skeletal material, and some new evidence and understanding of the evidence will be considered or presented to formulate an updated status of research in the perspective of the Black Death. The crucial role of rats and their fleas will also be demonstrated by the peculiar epidemiological features it produces:

• 1. Some scholars point out that dead rats are not mentioned in contemporary sources in connection with historical plague epidemics.