Did the Black Plague, in the 1300's, reach the Americas?

[raccoon]

I know it’s not generally believed that it did, but then the 1918 flu made it even to very remote Inuit villages. Yeah I know it was a different century.

I‘ve already googled and haven’t found anything.

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. Re-read your OP, think about what you said and then.....

Decide whether or not you should delete and start over.

[Scrivener7]

3. It's not really a dumb question. It's really a question of whether those who sailed to the

Americas in the 10th Century made periodic trips going forward. Some say there might be sparse evidence they did, but others say no.

At any rate, I'm not aware of evidence of plague in the Americas till Europeans were making regular trips there. Then all hell broke loose.

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. I didn't say it was a dumb question...

And I’ve known Raccoon to be a pretty smart poster for years. It’s just that sometimes we all have a brain fart, and as you indicated below, there wasn’t any traffic between Europe and North America until the 1500’s

[edhopper]

23. The Vikings were in

North America in the 1000s. But I don't think there is any evidence of the bubonic plague here in the 1300s.

[A HERETIC I AM]

24. Regular, cross Atlantic shipping wasn't happening when the plague...

Was extant in Europe, is all I was saying.

There’s an awful lot of hair splitting going on in this thread.

[Irish_Dem]

25. There are many very smart people here with graduate degrees.

And most of them were trained every day of their grad school program to split hairs as minutely as possible.
If you couldn't do that, you were washed out of the program.

I was very well trained to argue over minutia endlessly. So I enjoy it here and like watching the lively debate. But I understand it can drive most normal people to distraction.

[A HERETIC I AM]

33. That is absolutely one of the most unique insults anyone has ever directed at me.

I’m flattered!
Nicely done!

[Irish_Dem]

34. The most unique thank you I have ever received.

Thank you back. I think.

But touche.

[edhopper]

35. I see the distinction

and I did qualify my response.

[RFCalifornia]

41. No but Iberian fisherman were fishing off the coast nt

[csziggy]

65. There is also speculation that the Chinese sailed around the Americas before Columbus 'discovered'

The West Indies. See "1421: The Year China Discovered Americas" by Gavin Menzies

[edhopper]

72. That's interesting

but with the Vikings, there is physical proof in America.

The Chinese map controversy will have to wait until further evidence is found.

[Scrivener7]

2. There wasn't really traffic from the rest of the world to the Americas then.

[Klaralven]

5. Was there travel across the Bering Strait or along the Aleutian chain?

It's not clear that there wasn't some trade or travel between Siberia and Alaska.

[Scrivener7]

6. You seem to know the answer to your question.

[DFW]

8. There probably was, but then you have to ask the question

Were the Siberians of that area afflicted?

I don't know the answer to that one.

[LeftInTX]

16. Even if there is/was, no evidence of plague

Plague isn't really all that contagious.

It was Eurasian Middle Age culture which set the stage for the plague spread. (grain storage, agriculture, rats in grain, pets in homes etc)
Although it can be spread from human to human, the most common transmission was via animal transmission via flea bites.
https://www.cdc.gov/plague/transmission/index.html

Rats are actually old world animals and were not present in the new world. Old world rats and mice are different than other rodents in that they thrive on human agriculture.
Even if a rogue infected rodent crossed the Bering Strait, I think plague would not have survived under those conditions. There just were not enough vectors. Plague only spreads under certain circumstances.

[Klaralven]

21. Probably true. There was likely a lack of rodent vectors in the high arctic.

[wnylib]

22. There was back and forth contact

in the Bering region. Genetic studies have indicated that. However, for the Plague to reach the Americas that way, it would have to have been present that far north in northeastern Asia. I don't know of any indications that it was.

If the Plague had been carried from Greenland to northeastern North America, I think there would be mention in the Icelandic Sagas about illness among themselves and the native inhabitants of Vinland, so not likely. Also, there would be legends among Native American cultures about such a plague. AFAIK there aren't.

Most sources say that the disease that killed so many people in the early European explorations of North America, before Europeans had established permanent colonies, was smallpox. It was carried to what later became New England by British fishermen who established temporary fishing camps there for a few months out of the year.

Some people have speculated that they might also have carried the Plague, but descriptions in Native legends mention bodies covered in rashes of reddish spots. No mention of black or purple swelling, or other Black Plague symptoms.

Those early, temporary fishing camps, though, were in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

Early (1600s) French explorers and missionaries carried smallpox, too. They kept detailed records. Nothing about the Black Plague, only smallpox.

[secondwind]

7. This may help...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_North_American_prehistory

[bearsfootball516]

9. America wasn't discovered by Europeans until 1492, according to most experts.

So extremely highly unlikely it spread to here.

[raccoon]

10. Have you ever heard of L'Anse aux Meadows?

L’Anse aux Meadows

Article by Birgitta Wallace
Published Online November 28, 2006
Last Edited March 2, 2018
L’Anse aux Meadows is the site of an 11th-century Norse outpost at the tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula. Arguably the location of Straumfjord of the Vinland sagas, it is believed to be the first European settlement in North America. L’Anse aux Meadows was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1968 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. Today, it is the site of a popular interpretive centre and ongoing archeological research.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lanse-aux-meadows

[DenaliDemocrat]

13. You do realize that the whole "Vikings were here first"

Is part of the white washing of America right? Columbus and Spain are not white enough, Giovanni Cabotto has his name white-washed, but it’s still not white enough. Amerigo Vespucci is barely mentioned even though two continents bear his name. So there is the largely anecdotal and poorly documented attempt to credit the Nordic people. They are white enough.

[d_r]

15. I honestly think that's reaching

[hlthe2b]

18. ditto

[DenaliDemocrat]

29. It's not though

Give me another reason the History books call him John Cabbot instead of Giovanni Cabotto? Especially in a country where French is spoken as much as English

[muriel_volestrangler]

46. Because he set sail from England, and was financed by the English

so the accounts were mostly written in English. There's better justification for it than "Christopher Columbus".

[DenaliDemocrat]

47. Bullshit

He never changed his name. The English changed it for him.

[muriel_volestrangler]

55. As I said, he sailed from England. You wanted the reason the English form is normally used.

Spanish-speaking countries use "Colon", not "Columbus". "Columbus" is Latin, not Italian. These things happen - then and now. Mikołaj Kopernik is known as Nicolaus Copernicus. Marie Curie was born Maria, in Poland. And so on.

[DenaliDemocrat]

59. Thanks for whitesplaining

Much appreciated

[muriel_volestrangler]

67. I'm English. There's no problem with me explaining things about English usage

And if you don't want an explanation, don't ask for one. Finally, Cabotto was white.

[DenaliDemocrat]

73. Hmmm

You literally explained to me why white Protestants have the right to change someone’s name to something they are comfortable with, then defended it as “just something that happens”,

The same arguments when your people took the native Americans and cut their hair. “He’s in English school now and we just do that”

And no, Italians were not considered white in America until the late 1960’s, they were put in interment camps during WWII, and the largest mass lynching in America’s victims Sicilian.

A few more things that the “just happened” thanks to the Brits

The Native Land Act which paved the way for Apartheid, creating The Atlantic Slave Trade, starting the Opium Wars, screwing over Palestine, the partition of India, the Amritsar massacre, the Cyprus Internment, the Iraq Revolution, the Bengal Famine, crushing the Mau Mau Uprising, not to mention 1500 years of oppression of the Irish including starving them under the potato famine.

“these things happen”.

[muriel_volestrangler]

77. No, I did not literally do that.

I explained how the Catholic English (who did not regard themselves as a different 'race' from Cabot) financed Cabot's expedition. I gave examples, from both that era and much later, of people's names being adapted to the forms of other countries.

It is absurd to liken that to "when your people took the native Americans and cut their hair". Or the other incidents you are trying to compare it to. In fact, trying to liken the different forms of name for Cabot, or Columbus, to those, is so ridiculous that it's quite offensive. You disparage those by trying to use them in a discussion about how names get slightly changed between languages or dialects (eg he was known in Venice as 'Zuan').

You seem determined to find offence where there is none, and have no interest in a proper conversation.

[NickB79]

19. Viking settlements are well researched

Down to the date wood was cut by metal axes via radiocarbon methods.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/21/viking-settlement-1021-north-america-first-known-newfoundland-radiocarbon-dating/

[Klaralven]

20. There is no doubt that the Vikings settled in Greenland and traded with the Inuit

Genetic also provides evidence that the Inuit descended from the Thule who replaced the Dorset people.

The Thule descended from the Birnirk people of Siberia.

[DenaliDemocrat]

31. Greenland is NOT North or South America

The myth of the Norse discovery was perpetrated by white supremecists

[Klaralven]

32. Actually, it is.

Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America

[EX500rider]

39. And Newfoundland is not in Greenland either.

In the 1960s, scientists uncovered an early Viking settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Using carbon dating, researchers determined a rough period — 990 to 1050 — when Vikings were there.

[EX500rider]

26. No it's a part of historical Discovery and fact

[DenaliDemocrat]

30. Nah, it's extremely weak

And made to “whiten” America.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/05/31/white-supremacists-love-vikings-but-theyve-got-history-all-wrong/



https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/6076460/vikings-discovered-america-myth/%3Famp%3Dtrue

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mythsoftherunestone.com/2015/10/12/vikings-white-power-and-the-battle-over-americas-founding-myths/amp/

Sorry, it was politicized to “whiten” America

[EX500rider]

38. Not, it's fact and your WashPost article says so

There’s archaeological evidence for a Viking presence in North America.
White supremacists liking that fact does not make the fact not true.

[DenaliDemocrat]

48. Why are you so adamant that is was not olive-skinned people

That laid claim to this continent?

Colombo, Cabotto, and Vespucci documented these lands. Not some Viking. Sorry they aren’t white enough for you.

[EX500rider]

49. I prefer my life to be more fact-based thank you

And the facts are the Vikings did make it here before Columbus.
Color does not enter into it just the facts for me. Ymmv

[EX500rider]

51. It may be speculation to you

To the archaeologists that have done the digs there it's a fact backed up by carbon dating.

[DenaliDemocrat]

52. Well, but it's not. Just like the Kensington Stone

None of it is indisputable and most of it is sketchy. What is NOT sketchy is Cabotto, Vespucci, and Colombo. But they are Italian so we can’t give them credit - right?

[d_r]

53. When did Italians become not white?

[DenaliDemocrat]

60. Um, when Congress passed anti-immigration laws

For Southern Europeans, when they were put in internet camps in WWII, when they were lynched in New Orleans and Teddy Roosevelt called it a good start.


Seriously, go watch pane amaro and do a little reading

[d_r]

62. ok so

When the segregated bathrooms said "Whites only" which ones did Italians use? When the water fountains said "Whites only" which ones did Italians use? When schools were segregated which school did Italians go to? When inter-racial marriage was illegal, could Italians marry white people or black people? Did Jim Crow laws keep Italians from voting?

I'm not saying that Italian Americans have not experienced stereotypes and bias and discrimination, of course they have. But they have always been considered "white."

[Crunchy Frog]

75. Is that when historical consensus was reached on

the presence of Viking settlements in NA, and is that the reason why? Was the whole thing dreamed up by racist, ant-Italian/Spanish early 20th C Americans?

[Act_of_Reparation]

81. "Internet camps"

lol.

Well, everyone needs a hobby I guess.

[EX500rider]

54. No one says Columbus didn't make it to the New World

However also no says the Vikings didn't either except you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_North_America

[DenaliDemocrat]

64. Wikipedia

Lol. I guess you showed me

[EX500rider]

66. "Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica"

https://www.cnet.com/news/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/

[muriel_volestrangler]

68. Yes, they did show you, but if you want academic sources ...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-dating-method-shows-vikings-occupied-newfoundland-in-1021-ce-180978903/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8

Transatlantic exploration took place centuries before the crossing of Columbus. Physical evidence for early European presence in the Americas can be found in Newfoundland, Canada1,2. However, it has thus far not been possible to determine when this activity took place3,4,5. Here we provide evidence that the Vikings were present in Newfoundland in AD 1021. We overcome the imprecision of previous age estimates by making use of the cosmic-ray-induced upsurge in atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations in AD 993 (ref. 6). Our new date lays down a marker for European cognisance of the Americas, and represents the first known point at which humans encircled the globe. It also provides a definitive tie point for future research into the initial consequences of transatlantic activity, such as the transference of knowledge, and the potential exchange of genetic information, biota and pathologies7,8.

Main
The Vikings (or Norse) were the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic9. However, the only confirmed Norse site in the Americas is L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland9,10,11,12 (Extended Data Figs. 1 and 2). Extensive field campaigns have been conducted at this UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site, and much knowledge has been gained about the settlement and its contemporary environment2,13,14,15 (Supplementary Note 1). Evidence has also revealed that L’Anse aux Meadows was a base camp from which other locations, including regions further south, were explored15.

Whereas your Kensington Stone is indeed generally regarded as a forgery:

Kensington Stone, supposed relic of a 14th-century Scandinavian exploration of the interior of North America. Most scholars deem it a forgery, claiming linguistically that the carved writing on it is many years out of style; a few scholars, notably Robert A. Hall, Jr., former professor at Cornell University, have argued for its probable authenticity. A 200-pound (90-kilogram) slab of graywacke inscribed with runes (medieval Germanic script), the stone is said to have been unearthed on a farm near Kensington, Minn., in 1898. The inscription, dated 1362, is purported to be by a group of Norwegian and Swedish explorers from Vinland who visited the Great Lakes area in that year. The stone is housed in a special museum in Alexandria, Minn., and a 26-ton replica stands in nearby Runestone Park.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kensington-Stone

[DenaliDemocrat]

76. Vineland map is a forgery

And I just posted another article from The Smithsonian where the leading Norse researcher pretty much says yeah, it really didn’t happen and substantiated my position.

[muriel_volestrangler]

78. This is not about the Vineland map. It's about the established archaeology

and the scientific dating. No-one else has mentioned "the Vineland map". You are not arguing in good faith. Both the articles you link to acknowledge the archaeological evidence at L'Anse aux Meadows is sound.

[Crunchy Frog]

74. Seems your Washington Post article was written by racists too.

The colonization of Vinland was pretty much a disaster, but it did happen. There’s archaeological evidence for a Viking presence in North America. Two surviving sagas recount the voyages. The sagas don’t always agree when it comes to laying blame — was it internecine violence or fighting with the indigenous people? Who started the fighting? The general details, however, are known. Erikson found an island, named it Vinland and went home with timber. Later expeditions failed, though a few survivors made it home to tell the tale. Voyages west from Greenland soon ceased, as the risk/reward calculus didn’t seem favorable. So much for Vinland.

[Vogon_Glory]

37. I think that's a stretch

If there is any ideological connection to the argument that the Vikings were the first Europeans to contact the Americas, it has less to do with Columbus’ ancestry than it does that the Vikings were de-facto independent of any king, and were trying to settle and trade for themselves, not to enrich the kings, merchants and royal courts of maritime Western Europe.

Columbus was operating under a royal commission by absolute monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The Vikings were doing it for themselves.

[DenaliDemocrat]

71. Evidence is weak, and likely faked

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/medieval-map-of-north-america-identified-as-20th-century-forgery-180978751/

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/whos-first

The Viking myth was the white Protestant answer to an italian Catholic problem. Sad to see folks on DU defend it

[Vogon_Glory]

79. You may wish to review your claim

There was an article in Science dated on October 21st at 11:15 by one Michael Price that dates some of the timber at the Viking site at L’Anse aux Meadows. To 1021. (Sorry, but my phone doesn’t allow me to cut and paste links).

By the look of it, it’s pretty good evidence, although I suppose tree ring and other archaeological dating systems are subject to denial by Biblical literalists, Flat Earthers or other sorts using their usual bogus science-denying “evidence.”

To add another point: the Vikings may have been there, but they obviously didn’t stay for centuries.

To me, part of the appeal of the Viking myth is that these were families, clans, and individual adventurers willing to push beyond known territory for themselves and not as part of Conquistador’s goon squad or as forced laborers, much like the squatters who ventured west across the Appalachian’s starting in the late 1700’s..

[Act_of_Reparation]

69. And here I thought the Native Americans were "here first".

Silly me.

[Vogon_Glory]

80. A lot of us were acknowledging that

That’s why we said things like “the first Europeans to encounter the Americas” instead of the older “so-and-so discovered America” that many of us had thrown at us in elementary school half a century ago.

Big difference.

[Undue Process]

82. That's really a great point

Imagine how incredible it would be to have video tapes of those classroom lessons from half a century ago so we could re-examine them in a modern context! We've come so far.

Of course, glorifying the act of invading a foreign land and inciting violence with the indigenous peoples is generally frowned upon nowadays in standard classroom modules, from what I hear.

Lots of unlearning to do!

[meadowlander]

40. People other than Europeans exist.

There was extensive trans-Pacific travel by Polynesian people in the 14th Century and the Black Death started in the central Asian steppes so no reason it couldn't have gone through China to Polynesian sailors to South America to North America.

[LeftInTX]

11. No

Although it is currently endemic in the wilderness areas, it was brought over via ship rats at the port of Los Angeles.



Plague was first introduced into the United States in 1900, by rat–infested steamships that had sailed from affected areas, mostly from Asia. Epidemics occurred in port cities. The last urban plague epidemic in the United States occurred in Los Angeles from 1924 through 1925. Plague then spread from urban rats to rural rodent species, and became entrenched in many areas of the western United States. Since that time, plague has occurred as scattered cases in rural areas. Most human cases in the United States occur in two regions:

Northern New Mexico, northern Arizona, and southern Colorado
California, southern Oregon, and far western Nevada
Over 80% of United States plague cases have been the bubonic form. In recent decades, an average of seven human plague cases have been reported each year (range: 1–17 cases per year). Plague has occurred in people of all ages (infants up to age 96), though 50% of cases occur in people ages 12–45. It occurs in both men and women, though historically is slightly more common among men, probably because of increased outdoor activities that put them at higher risk.

https://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html

I really don't think it was in the US previously. Although it was horrific in the old world, (middle age, old world culture was a factor in it's spread: grain storage, more crowded population etc) I don't get the impression that it is contagious enough to have spread over the Bering Sea or even with early explorers. Plague is not very contagious. It was just poorly managed in the middle ages. There is a difference.

[GemState]

12. The black plague killed half the population of

Iceland in the early 15th-century but there is no evidence it reached the Norse settlements on the south-west coast of Greenland.

[Philosophizing Fool]

14. Possible that it was already here

The American southwest still has cases even now. The rodents which harbor the fleas, that carry the pestilence, have dwelt in the southwest long before the Europeans arrived. Very possible that indigenous people contracted the disease rarely and called it some term lost to time.

I think the first recorded death, from black death, in America occurred in the 1920s. Could be wrong there, listened to something years ago that may just be jumbled up with other info.

[LeftInTX]

17. It came from rats in the Port of Los Angeles and then it spread to native rodents

Plague was first introduced into the United States in 1900, by rat–infested steamships that had sailed from affected areas, mostly from Asia. Epidemics occurred in port cities. The last urban plague epidemic in the United States occurred in Los Angeles from 1924 through 1925. Plague then spread from urban rats to rural rodent species, and became entrenched in many areas of the western United States. Since that time, plague has occurred as scattered cases in rural areas. Most human cases in the United States occur in two regions:

https://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html

[Retrograde]

27. there was a large outbreak in the SF Bay Area c. 1900

believed to have been brought here when rats on a ship from China made it to land. It was sort of under control when the 1906 earthquake displaced some people to the East Bay and once again some rats made the trip: that's believed to be the source of the plague reservoirs in the West and Southwest. "The Barbary Plague" by Marilyn Chase is a recent account of the epidemic.

[Philosophizing Fool]

58. Thank you both

Learned something new and that is always fantastic. Spent some time looking at pre-colonial diseases in the native populations and zero evidence of plague.

One professor had written about Syphilis and how that may have been a disease passed from New world to Old. Never had considered that Europeans may have brought something more than plunder back home.

[Sympthsical]

28. Plague generally spread along trade routes 300 years later

And because trade routes had termini in population centers, it was able to get a foothold in each region.

People like the Norse had limited contact with native populations, much less established routes and populous settlements on the North American mainland. The one settlement we know of on the mainland was built in the 10th century, and it did not last very long. Maybe a decade or so. Given it's thought to have come from Asia into Europe in the 13th century, it's not really a thing.

[Hortensis]

36. Not all history is known, and we can't know for sure. So far.

Certainly the notion that Copernicus was the first person to theorize that the earth is a planet revolving around the sun is ridiculous. Many brilliant people over the millennia, such as shepherds on the Asian steppes, must have "discovered" that and much else attributed to those whose names are recorded in history. Explorers, intentional or accidental, the same.

I think we can assume that, if it did, it didn't spread widely enough for the stories to make it into surviving history. It could even have wiped out, or effectively wiped out, the first village it spread to, any knowledge eventually dying out with the only people to hear of it.

[iemanja]

42. Smallpox was the major epidemic of the Americas

and came when the Spaniards first reached the Caribbean (late 15th Century), Mexico, and then South America (16th century). It wiped out 90% of the indigenous population overall and almost all of it in the Caribbean.

There is no historical record of an earlier epidemic and certainly not at the time of the Black Death.

[dsc]

43. Interesting video that provides something of an answer

[raccoon]

56. Thanks for posting that. Nt

[iemanja]

61. That was smallpox

not the Bubonic Plague.

[dsc]

63. yes and no

while Small pox is the largest killer they brought it wasn't the sole one.

[ananda]

44. In the form of mass insanity, yes.

...

[msfiddlestix]

45. I don't think we had trade here then, but maybe.. check the story on wiki, (fascinating read)

Here's the link for more information and an interesting map.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague[a]) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the death of 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.[1][2] Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas, but it can also take a secondary form where it is spread person-to-person contact via aerosols causing septicaemic or pneumonic plagues.[3][4]

The Black Death was the beginning of the second plague pandemic.[5] The plague created religious, social and economic upheavals, with profound effects on the course of European history.

The origin of the Black Death is disputed. The pandemic originated either in Central Asia or East Asia but its first definitive appearance was in Crimea in 1347.[6] From Crimea, it was most likely carried by fleas living on the black rats that travelled on Genoese ships, spreading through the Mediterranean Basin and reaching Africa, Western Asia and the rest of Europe via Constantinople, Sicily and the Italian Peninsula. There is evidence that once it came ashore, the Black Death mainly spread person-to-person as pneumonic plague, thus explaining the quick inland spread of the epidemic, which was faster than would be expected if the primary vector was rat fleas causing bubonic plague.[7]

The Black Death was the second great natural disaster to strike Europe during the Late Middle Ages (the first one being the Great Famine of 1315–1317) and is estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population.[8][9][10] The plague might have reduced the world population from c.  475 million to 350–375 million in the 14th century.[11] There were further outbreaks throughout the Late Middle Ages and, with other contributing factors (the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages), the European population did not regain its level in 1300 until 1500.[12] Outbreaks of the plague recurred around the world until the early 19th century.

"The World" was a much smaller place at the time of the Black Plague in context of trade movements etc. I'm aware of migrations from Norway to Greenland and evidence found along the New England and eastern part of Canada, but my knowledge is a bit sketchy in terms of human contact vis a vis migration and trade.

[48656c6c6f20]

57. It might have been transmitted via

Viking Airlines.

[melm00se]

70. That is an interesting question

to one I doubt that we will get an acceptably accurate answer with acceptable evidence.

it would certainly make a really really really good graduate or doctoral thesis.

The big issue blocking this is that the indigenous population (thule) of northeast North America didn't have written language and the death toll of y. pestis would have certainly and completely disrupted any semblance of oral history.

Now, in my opinion, the plague probably would not have made to North America. This is because

1. There is no or limited evidence of an epidemic from the 10th to 13th century.
2. Iceland did not suffer from the 14th century version of the plague.
3. Even if it had, the transit time coupled with the disease progression timeline plausibly could have killed an entire ship while enroute.

The flaw in this hypothesis is that while there was no plague in the 14th century, there was a dreadful epidemic during the early 15th century but it was not definitely attributable to the plague but the estimated mortality rates were pretty damn high. This supports a y. pestis hypothesis. If there was y. pestis present, it is possible that a) it could have infected a ship outbound to North America, b) despite the infection, people made it to North America alive and carried the disease to Thule population and c) the mortality rate broke the chain of oral history.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.