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The Microbe Yersinia Pestis: The Plague In Europe

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We all know that the plague brought a tremendous amount of hardship upon Europe. The microbe Yersinia pestis caused more than a 30% decrease in Europe’s population. This microbe, we also know, was found in rodents and fleas that were all over Europe. This then led to a “long term shortage of workers” and the eventual decline in feudalism (Zimmer 2015). The thing we all do not know is that this microbe seems to have been in existence thousands of years before the plague outbreak in Europe. A recent article published in The New York Times, reports that a new study, printed in the Cell Journal, has found evidence of Y. pestis to be “3,000 to 4,000 years old” (Zimmer 2015). While the article does touch on the key points the study had concluded, it does not present …show more content…

If one were to pick up the research study with no prior knowledge on anything related to the plague, they would have a lot of trouble trying to understand why the study was talking about different microbes instead of just the Y. pestis. The article found in The New York Times does not mention the fact that the study involved the microbe’s ancestor, Y. pseudotueberculousis. While the study was trying to find traces of Y. pestis in raw DNA sequences, the researchers also had to make sure that they were looking for the right microbe. Because there was no mention of this, the reader would think nothing other than the fact that the study must not have been very complicated. Zimmer, the author of the article, relays the information in the study with very little detail. The largely over-simplification of the information in the study does not allow readers to get all the information. For example, Zimmer reports “after acquiring the ability to infect fleas, Yersinia pestis may have begun to spread more readily form one rodent to another, eventually

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