Impact of the Black Death
About 1300 C.E., a process of global climatic change caused temperatures to decline all over the world, resulting in a "little ice age". This lasted for a little more than 500 years. (Bentley, J.H., Ziegler, H.F., 2008). Just after this onset, the eastern hemisphere also fell to another challenge in the form of devastating epidemic plague. Bubonic plague spread from the Yunnan region of southwest China, where it had probably been a problem for centuries prior. The plague bacillus infects rodents such as rats, squirrels, and prairie dogs, and fleas transmit the disease from one rodent to another.