<P> The scenario that would place the first outbreak in central Asia agrees with the first reports of outbreaks in China in the early 1330s . The plague struck the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334 . On the heels of the European epidemic, a more widespread disaster occurred in China during 1353--1354 . Chinese accounts of this wave of the disease record a spread to eight distinct areas: Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan, and Suiyuan, throughout the Mongol and Chinese empires . Historian William McNeill noted that voluminous Chinese records on disease and social disruption survive from this period, but no one has studied these sources in depth . </P> <P> It is probable that the Mongols and merchant caravans inadvertently brought the plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe . The plague was reported in the trading cities of Constantinople and Trebizond in 1344 . </P> <P> In October 1347, a fleet of Genoese trading ships fleeing Caffa reached the port of Messina in Sicily . By the time the fleet reached Messina, all the crew members were either infected or dead . It is presumed that the ships also carried infected rats and / or fleas . Some ships were found grounded on shorelines, with no one aboard remaining alive . </P> <P> Looting of these lost ships also helped spread the disease . From there, the plague spread to Genoa and Venice by the turn of 1347--1348 . </P>

When did the black death arrive in europe