From the Black Death, through the Spanish influence, to Ebola and AIDS - epidemics have always shaped humanity no less than wars. • Will the Corona also be remembered in history books?

• The Thing in Marseille // Painting: Michelle Sir, 1720

In the weeks since the first eruption, the Corona virus has taken over the new releases, hit China and its economy, and according to official data, has resulted in more than a thousand deaths to date (Tuesday). The plague is also affecting global trade, and has already led to concerns about the recession approaching China and the world.

But of course the Corona was not the first epidemic to hit humanity, with some affecting human history as much as famous battles, speeches or peace agreements. Already in the book of Exodus, the plague that struck Egypt as part of the Ten Plagues is mentioned, but like the other plagues mentioned in the Bible, little is known about it.

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The first recorded epidemic in history, occurred between 429 and 426 BCE, leading to 75,000 per 100 dead, leading to Athens losing in the Second Peloponnesian War against Sparta. Today, the epidemic is believed to be due to a type that came from Egypt, following the findings of DNA tests carried out in a mass grave discovered near Athens in the 1990s. The epidemic led to the complete disintegration of Athenian society, and Athens never again became an influential city-state in the Greek world.

The first epidemic estimated to lead to millions of deaths was the Antoninus epidemic that hit the Roman Empire between 165 and 180 BCE, killing - according to estimates, between five and ten million people. The epidemic was probably a smallpox epidemic, one of the deadliest illnesses in history and in fact was the first disease to be vaccinated and distributed until the disease itself became extinct.

The Antoninus epidemic was in fact one of the first global epidemics, even recorded in China and probably passed through the trade routes that opened between Europe and China in the last centuries BC. The epidemic hit Rome at the height of its power during the "Five Good Emperors" era, and some claim that Western Rome's decline began with this epidemic.

Empires have weakened - Islam has risen

The next epidemic that hit Rome, in fact in the Eastern Roman Empire and after the collapse of the Western Empire, also struck Rome at the height of its power, under Emperor Justinian and became one of the deadliest epidemics in history, killing between 25 and 50 million people, about 40 percent of the Roman Empire's population. Justinian himself almost died of the plague.

The epidemic is considered the first significant eruption of this bacterium - one of the deadliest bacteria in human history. The impact of the Justinian epidemic, along with a similar epidemic that broke out in the Sasanian Empire in 628 AD, continues today.

Got himself a plague. Emperor Justinian // Mosaic at the San Vitale Basilica, Ravenna, Italy

The tremendous damage done to the Eastern and Sasanian Roman empires in the sixth and seventh centuries, together with the incessant wars between them, weakened them and allowed the new Middle East force - Islam, to storm the region.

The epidemic that has changed Europe

This struck again in Europe in the 14th century, and this time much more deadly. It is estimated that the epidemic - dubbed the Black Death - led to the deaths of between 75 and 200 million people, about 60% of the European population between 1331 and 1353. According to the comments, the epidemic began after rats infected with the disease came from the Mongolia region to the mainland. It is difficult to overstate the impact of the terrible plague on Europe's population.

Medieval Doctor, 17th Century Illustration

The arts, the economy and even the social order in Europe have all changed in the aftermath of the epidemic - which led to the deaths of many nobles, the strengthening of peasants and the collapse of the feudal order. The Jews in Europe also suffered from the plague, but not only because of the bacteria. Many Europeans saw Jewish communities as guilty of the serious illness, and began the persecution of Jews and their imprisonment in ghettos.

Guns, bacteria and steel

If the epidemic known so far has hit mainly Europe and the Middle East, the discovery of the continent of America has led to the spread of European diseases to the indigenous population of America, an unprecedented population, causing unprecedented killing in what may appear to be biological warfare, even if unintended.

Aztec illustration of smallpox patients

According to modern estimates, smallpox, flu, measles and other diseases have killed tens of millions and destroyed up to 90% of the original continent's population in about 100 years.

A century of epidemics

The 19th century was known on one hand for its medical progress, which included the development of vaccines and drugs for many diseases on the one hand, and on the other the outbreak of many epidemics - mainly due to the industrial revolution that led to the mass migration of people from the countryside to the cities.

Among other things, epidemics of tuberculosis, cholera and typhus, which have killed millions, have erupted in European cities, and they too - mainly tuberculosis - have become part of 19th-century culture and literature.

The last big epidemic

Some say that the 20th century actually began on June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated in Sarajevo, leading to the First World War. But in addition to the unthinkable massacre of war, another event that marked the century as a bleeding century was the Spanish influenza epidemic that broke out at the end of the war and led to 50 to 100 million dead worldwide.

The epidemic hit three waves between 1917 and 1919, moving along with soldiers fighting in the World War and leading to the deaths of between 3 and 5 percent of the world's population.

Kansas hospital handles Spanish influenza patients // Photo: National Museum of Kansas, Kansas

The 20th century also ended with an epidemic - the AIDS epidemic, which claimed the lives of some 30 million people across the globe. What caused the fatal illness to not be properly treated initially was the prejudice that accompanied it. Because the epidemic initially spread mainly in the gay community, and conservative officials in the Reagan administration even believed it was a punishment for the community.

Only at the end of the president's term, he ordered the state authorities to take care of it, and since then has developed a drug cocktail that, while not capable of curing the disease, allows those infected with the virus to live a normal life and even prevent infection.

Not just the corona

Although the 21st century did not know epidemics the size of the centuries before it, but even against the corona some pale. The toughest epidemic in the current century so far has been the swine flu that broke out between 2009 and 2010. It is estimated that as a result of the deadly influenza virus, between 150 and 575,000 people died.

Will the corona reach such mortality numbers? At present, it seems not, but there are some who believe that China is hiding the true eruption figures and perhaps the Corona will be remembered as the great 21st century epidemic in disease history.