In Han China, in 162 a.d. an epidemic broke out among Chinese troops fighting barbarians there, killing 30-40% of the soldiers. In 221 the Han empire collapsed, and the anarchy of the Warring States period began. A second epidemic broke out in 310, killing 98% of all the people in the northwest. In 322 a third killed 20-30% of the population over a much broader area. It appears to have also been smallpox or measles. In the year 2 there had been 12.3 million hearths- 58.5 million people- in China. In 742 there were only 8.9 million hearths. This was a loss of over 25% of the population. The survivors turned from Confucianism to the more consolatory Buddhism.

The second, great pandemic to effect Eurasia would be Bubonic plague. It first appeared in Lybia and Egypt in the 3rd. century b.c., but it did not begin to ravage Europe until 542 a.d. where it flared up intermittently until 750, before disappearing. Around the 6th. century Europe entered one of its macroclimatic cold cycles, which lasted until the 10th.century. Crops failed, people starved, settled populations collapsed before waves of barbarians seeking warmer climates as well as escape from fiercer barbarians called the Hsing-nu ( the Huns ). Classical learning was lost and a period of chaos called the "Dark Ages" began.

Bubonic plague probably originated in India and spread by ship from there to Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean. In its classic plague form it is spread by black rats, the intermediate host, who are native to India. The bacterium responsible, Yersinia pestis, is harmless to its host, fleas who infest burrowing rodents. The wild rodents aren't affected by the disease either, but when black rats acquire the infected fleas and disease, they die. The fleas then abandon their dying hosts for human beings, and the result is the Black Death, so named for the cyanotic appearance of its victims. The first signs are fever, headaches, sore throat, and swollen lymph nodes. Egg-shaped swellings called "buboes" appear in the armpits and groin, and, in the end, capillaries burst on the victim's skin, turning them purple. The oldest known foci of this disease are the foothills of the Himalyas between India and China, the Lake Region of Central Africa, and the Eurasian Steppes.

When Bubonic plague first hit Constantinople in 542 an eyewitness, Procopius, claimed it killed 10,000 a day for four months in that city alone. This first encounter was known as "the plague of Justinian" after the current Byzantine emperor. The arrival of plague in the old Roman and Persian empires probably prepared and hastened the spread of Islam throughout the regions already depopulated by smallpox. Many canals in the Persian empire, an irrigation culture, were abandoned in the middle of the 7th. century, probably because of Bubonic plague. The Moslem conquest of 651 followed by only a few years.
Bubonic plague was first mentioned in China about 610. It broke out as a serious epidemic there in the southern coastal cities for a century, from 762 to 860, killing half the population. Then it vanished for awhile and in 1200, the Chinese population stood at 100,000,000 people. The Yangtse River Valley had become more populated by the 8th. century, and under the Sung Dynasty ( 960-1279 ) its population resembled that of the Yellow River, for the Chinese had become more resistant to dengue fever and malaria. While the north remained in control of the barbarians, south and central China flourished under the enlightened Sung.
In 552 Buddhist missionaries from the continent introduced measles and smallpox to Japan. Japan, an isolated archipelago, was vulnerable. In 808 an epidemic disease killed half the population and may have been Bubonic plague imported from Canton and Shantung. In the 250 years from 1080 to 1330, however, Japan's population doubled, and had stabilized by 1300. Britain showed a similar pattern of island vulnerability to epidemic infection from the continent, and a similar recovery period, doubling her population in 250 years after heavy losses from plague.

Between 900-1200 massive population growth occurred throughout Eurasia and the old caravan routes were revived. The Mongol empire arose at the end of this period, and it was under these far-travelling horsemen that Bubonic plague spread rapidly and thouroughly across Eurasia. Their empire followed the old silk route, spreading, at its height, from China to the gates of Vienna and including Russia, northern India, and the Middle East. In 1252 the Mongols returned from campaigns in Burma and probably introduced plague to their homelands in the Steppes. The wild, burrowing rodent population of the Steppes was infected with Yersinia pestis by the early 1300's, perhaps by fleas and black rats trapped in Mongol booty from southern raids. The bacillus survived the northern winters in the vast underground cities constructed by the burrowing rodents. In less than 100 years it ran out of these hosts and spread from the wild rodents back to the vulnerable black rat and man.

Since the Plague of Justinian and a few outbreaks following that, plague had been absent from Europe, as it had been absent from China during the Sung Dynasty. Its reappearance in the 14th. century in both places was devastating. Both Europe and China lost almost half their populations. The Mongol conquest of China began in 1213, and was completed in 1279. Fifty years later Bubonic plague killed 90% of the population of Hopei. From 1353 until 1354 two-thirds of the population died of plague in 8 scattered Chinese states. The total Chinese population fell from 123 million in 1200 to only 65 million in 1393.

The bacillus spread overland after 1331, following the caravan routes to the Crimea, where plague broke out among Mongol troops stationed there. It then took ship to Messina harbor in Sicily, spreading from there to the rest of Europe in 1346. Europe had reached a saturation point in population. Forests were depleted and the climate had changed again. The warm cycle that began in tn point in population. Forests were depleted and the climate had changed again. The warm cycle that began in the 10th century had ended and another 400 year cold cycle began that lasted until the Napoleonic era. Shipping had improved and there was now year-round trade between the Mediterranean and northern Europe, which spread the black rat and plague.

From 1346 to 1350 mortality was high, ultimately destroying a third to half of Europe's population. Entire villages were wiped out in some places, while other places- such as Milan- were oddly untouched. It took 5 or 6 generations- about 130 years- for the population to absorb the shock.

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