Estimated death toll of the Plague of Justinian 541-767
possibly the earliest pandemic to have been recorded reliably and with relative accuracy. Contemporary scholars described the symptoms and effects of the disease in detail, and these matched descriptions of the Black Death and Third Pandemic, leading most historians to believe that this was bubonic plague. It was also assumed that the plague originated in sub-Saharan Africa, before making its way along the Nile to Egypt, and then across the Mediterranean to Constantinople. In 2013, scientists were able to confirm that Justinian's Plague was in fact Yersinia pestis (the bacteria which causes bubonic plague), and recent theories suggest that the plague originated in the Eurasian Steppes, where the Black Death and Third Pandemic are also thought to have originated from, and that it was brought to Europe by the Hunnic Tribes of the sixth century.
The Plague of Justinian was an outbreak of bubonic plague that ravaged the Mediterranean and its surrounding area, between 541 and 767CE. It was likely the first major outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe, and