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Comment by joseph_cooney | Hacker News Reader

I never realized until recently how the high mobility of goods, flexible trade system etc. brought about by the rise of the Mongol empire a few centuries before, allowed the Bubonic Plague to spread from south-east asia through to the middle east and europe in a relatively short time. Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.

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Mobility of goods has been overall more positive to those involved than negative, all factors included.

In the long-term, sure, but when it wiped out a third of Europe, that was definitely not more positive than negative.

You fail to see the bigger picture: - exchange of knowledge/technology - exchange of goods - exchange of cultural assets (goods, ideas and languages) - establishment of trade routes and advancement of transportation systems (roads, sea routes)

It was massively positive overall. And while the plague killed many people, mankind learned a lot from it: we lacked hygiene and we were able to identify measured to further protect ourselves from such afflictions.

We didn't learn anything from it, we had no idea what caused the Black Death until well into the modern age, centuries after it actually happened.

While you might argue that development was a net positive overall, we didn't actually learn a whole lot from it - plague was a recurring problem in Europe for centuries. For example, major epidemic we all think of as "The Black Death" kicked off in 1347, but there were still major outbreaks (the Great Plague of London) in 1665.

If any one disease is responsible for hygiene and disease prevention in the west, I think you can make a much stronger case for the Cholera outbreaks in the mid-1800's.

You should read the Dune series.

Who says I haven't.

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