• Don Walker, an osteologist with the Museum of London, poses Wednesday with one of the 14th-century skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square. | AP
    Don Walker, an osteologist with the Museum of London, poses Wednesday with one of the 14th-century skeletons found by construction workers under central London's Charterhouse Square. | AP

  • The Observer

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LONDON – Archaeologists and forensic scientists who have examined 25 skeletons unearthed in the Clerkenwell area of central London a year ago believe they have uncovered the truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Britain and Europe in the mid-14th century.

Analysis of the bodies and of wills registered in London at the time has cast serious doubt on “facts” that every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.

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