by Max C

Created on: September 13, 2009

The Black Death traveled from the South and East to Medieval Europe, where it ravaged an overpopulated feudal society. Famine due to agricultural shortcomings weakened Europe before the devastating disease cut the population of Europe possibly as much as in half. The events that followed proved wonderful for the surviving peasants, as prices plummeted and wages soared. The peasants who had been so unimportant to the upper classes were now realized as vital, and their social position jumped. With a full head of steam peasants worked their way up the social ladder, not allowing nobles to return them to pre-plague social status.

The Black Death, the epidemic that would eventually prove to be the most deadly natural disaster in medieval Europe had several contributing factors which weakened the population it was soon to strike. Before the plague reached Europe, Europe had been subjected to a period of decreased temperature and increased rain. These climatic changes had a negative effect on agricultural production, and caused peasants, who were already on the brink of starvation, as their payment was minimal, and whose land was scarcely sufficient to grow enough to support a family, to starve. The famine that followed killed masses of people by itself, and the malnourished survivors were susceptible to disease. The Black Plague itself was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This bacterium caused to major forms of disease, bubonic plague, which covered victims in large, black, boil like grows called buboes, the other form of disease which was even more deadly is called pneumonic plague. This form was highly contagious and quickly fatal, as it attacked the lungs.

The plague arrived in Europe from trade hips from the South, or possibly it had traveled with traders from the east via land. The plague was most likely carried by infected rats which transmitted the disease to fleas when the fleas ingested the rats' blood. The blood then built up in the fleas' body and the flea had to regurgitate it into anything it could bite. Thus, humans bitten by fleas with the disease could become infected. The already weakened and still overcrowded population of Europe was then devastated as the deadly plague worked its way through overly populated, unsanitary villages on its route Northward until it finally burned itself out, leaving behind a Europe with new challenges, and new opportunities ahead.

Surviving laborers were now in demand like never before, and goods were so

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