A volcanic eruption may have set off a chain reaction that led to Europe's deadliest pandemic.

Volcanic eruptions could have fueled the spread of the Black Death plague across medieval Europe, according to a new study that pieces together evidence from ice cores, rare blue tree rings from ...

New data suggests an eruption cooled Europe, disrupted harvests and pushed Italian states into grain trades that may have ...

A new analysis aims to answer a longstanding question about why the plague reached Europe when it did—and why it spread so ...

The Black Death ravaged Europe, and scientists and historians are still working to understand how it became so deadly ...

A study suggests that a volcanic eruption around 1345 cooled the climate, leading to crop failures. On the ships that carried grain to fill the gap came plague-carrying fleas.

New research suggests that a combination of volcanic activity, cold summers and famine brought the deadly plague to Europe.

The rapid spread of the Black Death through medieval Europe could have its origins in a massive volcanic eruption, according ...

The study’s authors believe that these grain ships arrived with stowaways: plague-infected fleas. Once in Europe, the fleas ...

Climate data and historical accounts suggest that crop failures in the 1340s prompted Italian officials to import grain from ...

The infamous Black Death—a pandemic that killed as many as one third to one half of Europeans within just a few years—may ...

Clues contained in tree rings have identified mid-14th-century volcanic activity as the first domino to fall in a sequence ...