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The Black Death and Justinian’s Plague: History’s Worst Pestilences

Khalid Elhassan January 8, 2025 13 min

Plague - Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death — Illustration from the medieval Liber Chronicarum 1, depicting skeletons rising for the dance of death. Live Science

15. The Long History of the Black Death’s Origins

The Black Death first erupted in China. However, its bacteria might have originated in Europe thousands of years before. Evidence of Yersinia pestis was found in a Swedish tomb that dates back to circa 3000 BC. It could have caused a devastating plague thousands of years ago that led to the Neolithic Decline, when Europe’s population crashed. It also caused Justinian’s Plague, a sixth century pandemic that, as seen further below, rivaled the Black Death in deadliness and devastation. The Black Death first reached Europe through a 1346 siege when the Mongols set out to capture the city of Caffa, now Feodosiya, in the Crimea. In an era of poor sanitation and medical knowledge, sieges were often as deadly for the besiegers as the besieged, because the besieging armies encamped around the targeted city often came down with various diseases.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.