Volcanoes have always held an incredible power capable of shaping the course of human history. Around 1,600 B.C.E., an explosion on the Greek island of Santorini likely wiped out Europe’s first ...

A newly analyzed set of climate data points to a major volcanic eruption that may have played a key role in the Black Death’s arrival. Cooling and crop failures across Europe pushed Italian states to ...

The Black Death — one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, estimated to have killed up to half of Europe’s population — might have been set in motion by a volcanic eruption, a new study ...

For centuries, the prevailing explanation of how the Black Death entered medieval Europe was a simple narrative of biological warfare. During a siege of Caffa, a Genoa-controlled port city on the ...

In our research in the British Library’s medieval collections, we have identified a previously unnoticed document that provides fresh insights into the survivors of the outbreak of plague known as the ...

Between 1347 and 1353, Europe was gripped by the most catastrophic pandemic in its history: the Black Death. Killing many millions, the plague wiped out between one-third and a half of Europe's ...

Historians have traced myths about the Black Death’s rapid journey across Asia to one 14th-century poem by Ibn al-Wardi. His imaginative maqāma, never meant as fact, became the foundation for ...