Oh no! What next! Historians all over the world review their publications as Norwegian scientists link successive plague years with a boom in the population of gerbils!
Gerbils? The cute mice things that my daughter loved?
Not them exactly – these are big gerbils, these are mean gerbils, these are gerbils living in Russia carrying the plague.
Doesn't sound much like Popsy.
Wasn't much like Popsy. But it is really going to cause a lot of work.

The suggestion is that the Black Death came in successive waves to Europe because the boom in the gerbil population in Russia meant that other rodents were infected with the virus along the Silk Road routes, leading ultimately to Europe, unleashing the greatest killer of a European population ever. A ton of history balances on this fact – the end of feudalism (because of the shortage of workers), abandonment of land (because of the decimation of the population), a lot of pessimistic painting, some great literature, scepticism about God (because of the injustice of everyone dying), persecutions and anti-Semitism (trying to find someone to blame), millions of personal tragedies – when all along it was gerbils.

This has been a great year so far for new history. First we have an Anne Boleyn portrait authenticated. Now we have a new carrier for the Black Death, and next the reburial of Richard III. What next? Elizabeth I's love child is a hairdresser in Streatham?

Picture from Yuriy75, via Wikimedia Commons