In 1346, Tartar leader Khan Janibeg laid siege to a Genoese city in Crimea called Kaffa in hopes of removing the Italians from this central foothold. What happened next has become part-legend, part-historical record: As the Tartars waited outside Kaffa’s walls, the soldiers began to fall one by one to a terrible disease, the plague.
Out of frustration, the Tartar leaders catapulted the disease-ridden bodies over the walls of the city, where the residents threw the bodies aside and fled in ships back to Italy. But the plague followed them to Sicily and spread throughout Europe, killing 30 to 50 percent of the population by 1351.
New research has shown, however, that a different strain of the plague existed in England as far back as the dawn of the Bronze Age, some 4,000 years ago, showing how humans have lived alongside the disease for millennia while suffering only periodic pandemics. ...
