CLEP Western Civ I

Answer: E - The bubonic plaque that turned into Europe’s Black Death started in Mongolia, traveled the Silk Road, and entered Europe by way of Italian merchants (carried by the fleas on black rats that ran rampant on merchant ships). The plague spread west from Italy, striking cities the hardest, since people were in closer proximity and merchant posts were in cities. However, people of that time didn’t understand how diseases really spread, so they blamed a host of culprits, including the Jews, a displeased God, a conjunction of three planets, lepers and other people visibly afflicted with an unrelated malady, and the always popular but nevertheless ambiguous “bad air.”