Chasing the Plague

Follow scientists as they track down the earliest known bubonic plague victims in hopes of preventing future outbreaks, while historians and scholars explore the societal impact of the plague on medieval Europe. What happens when a third of a continent’s population is wiped out?

A spike in gravestones from 1338 in Kyrgyzstan led historian Philip Slavin to theorize that the Black Death may have begun years before it swept through Europe. Inscriptions mentioning “pestilence” begs the question: were these the earliest known victims of the plague?

During the Black Plague, death came so fast that proper Christian burials became impossible. In Siena, mass graves filled the city as few priests were available and families were forced to bury loved ones themselves. The haunting journal of Agnolo di Tura reveals the horror as he buried his five children with his own hands.

In 1347, ships from the Black Sea arrived in Sicily carrying an unseen killer. Rats and fleas aboard the grain vessels spread the plague that would become the Black Death. Within months, Italian ports fell. By the next year, the plague spread from the Mediterranean to England.

The Black Death may have killed nearly 50 percent of the Europe's population, making it one of the deadliest pandemic in recorded human history. Compared to the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed a recorded 1 percent of the population affected.