This blogpost summarizes findings presented at a talk at Erfurt University on 16 May 2023, in the series KFG “Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formation,” Global Exchange: Trade, Knowledge, and Religion. In this blogpost we present our key argument that rigorous correlation between archaeological, genomic, and documentary evidence demonstrates that plague arrived in Europe at least 2-3 decades before the Black Death of the 1340s. This alters the Black Death narrative profoundly. Further exploration of the implications of this realization will be the work of researchers in a range of disciplines.