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I'm not sure why this is news. Yersinia pestis (the plague) first showed up in the 540s AD in the form of the Plague of Justinian. In fact the plague occurred just as Justinian's armies were over extended reconquering the western portion of the empire, essentially dooming the empire in the long run due to its diminished demographics.

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Wikipedia says it became particularly virulent 4000 years ago, so the question isn't "was the plague around before the 14th century", which it clearly was, but "was the 14th century plague which decimated Europe the tail end of a longer-running chain of destruction", which apparently is not what was generally believed.

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