New space-time perspectives on the propagation characteristics of the Black Death epidemic and its relation to bubonic plague

Abstract

This work presents, for the first time, a series of detailed space-time maps of Black Death mortality and infected area propagation throughout the fourteenth century AD Europe. The maps integrate a variety of interdisciplinary knowledge bases about the devastating epidemic and provide researchers and the interested public with an informative description of the Black Death dynamics (temporal evolution, local and global geographical patterns, etc.). Concerning the relation of the Black Death with bubonic plague, our space-time findings provide considerable support to the view that Black Death was a different kind of epidemic than bubonic plague and, a the same time, they generate no damaging hard evidence against the new proposals concerning the Black Death etiology.