Fake History Hunter

Let’s review another youtube video by The Infographics Show, yes that lot again… they have 14 million subscribers. This one is called: How Did Bubonic Plague (Black Death) Actually End? It was seen by almost 5 million people…

This article was originally a thread on social media, which is why it is formatted with lots of images and short responses.
The text is about the image below that section.

Can you see the first error already?

Yes, of course. The plague doctor with the bird beak mask wasn’t around during the Black Death.

Also, the title is already misleading.
The Black Death was a specific outbreak of the bubonic (and pneumonic) plague, so Black Death & Bubonic Plague don’t mean the same. Mixing them up is like saying war in general is the same as the second world war.

As often is the case, Asia, the middle east & Africa don’t even get a mention even though the outbreak was killing millions there before it even reached W-Europe.
Don’t those parts of the world not count? Do those people not count?

A third of the world? Is Eurasia that big? So without the middle east, Africa and oh you know, the other places that were actually not affected at all, like the Americas, it still killed a third of the entire world?

The animator/illustrator doesn’t seem to have done any research regarding fashion or interior design of the 14th century. I especially like that side table lamp…

The BD was mostly spread by fleas (and lice) on humans, the idea that it was only or mostly the rats is considered outdated by quite a few historians & experts. But here the BD story starts when rats arrive by ship in Italy, yes totally ignoring years of BD killing countless people elsewhere, because remember; only Europe matters…

This is just annoying. Look at how hard they’re trying to show that the BD was just an European thing.

Compare it with this map, which is flawed and desperately needs an update, but at least shows that it was a much more international disaster:

Calling it the black plague is also silly for someone making a documentary on the topic. It’s either the Black Death or the bubonic/pneumonic/septicaemic plague, but black plague is not really the right term for the disease or the specific 14th century outbreak.
I get that lots of people call it the black plague, but remember that this video was made by a youtuber with millions of subscribers, it was meant for an audience of millions.

As I mentioned earlier, the current thoughts on how the plague spread is that it was the fleas & lice on mostly humans who caused it to be as disastrous as it turned out to be.
This is partially based on how fast it spread, faster than rats would have been able to spread it.
But these days genetics, archaeology & tons of research
Rats often still get the blame, but it was spread by fleas on humans, goods and most animals, yes including cats.

The bubonic plague struck Europe long before the Black Death, the Romans had an outbreak that killed millions as well. Although the word quarantine does come from the Italian practice during the black death, it’s also in the bible and temporary isolation was not a new thing.

Improving sanitation didn’t help much, throwing filth out of windows (mostly a myth) & cleaning your house won’t keep fleas out, all this wouldn’t have much impact till we got access to vacuum cleaners, chemical products & well isolated homes.
And yes, the illustrations still don’t depict the middle ages.
Also shouldn’t it be fewer, not less?

Fleas don’t care if you’ve washed your hands. Washing hands will of course help you not spread the plague if you’ve just rubbed your hands over a dying, puss spewing plague victim, but medieval people were already washing their hands quite a lot.
Yes, washing your hand before, during & after eating was pretty much expected behaviour in medieval Europe.
They didn’t use forks and surprisingly (ahem) people didn’t want food and grease all over their clothes and houses.

Nope, Ring a Ring o’ Roses has nothing to do with any plague, it’s originally a German nursery rhyme about love, no getting sick or falling down mentioned.

Funny, after a long video about how the plague ended, claiming that it was because of hygiene and mentioning that it evolved to be less viral, they only mention that the real reason the plague is no longer wiping us all out in great numbers is the invention of antibiotics in the last seconds.

At least the video has a list of sources, that’s commendable and sadly quite rare on youtube.

Finally, if you want to hear the most up to date & recent ideas on the Black Death’s origin & how it spread I’d like to recommend this lecture by Professor Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology:

If you enjoyed reading my review, you can find links to more reviews of films, art, books & games by me here;

Reviews & recommended threads