In recent years, this pandemic has reminded the world of how serious infectious diseases can be. Fortunately, we can deal with them relatively easily thanks to advances in vaccination and medicine. The tuberculosis , cholera and smallpox that once killed millions of people have either become a thing of the past or no longer poses the same level of threat.
One of the most serious diseases that has been conquered is plague . It still exists, but thanks to the invention of the antibiotic , it is no longer considered a death penalty. However, this is a small comfort for countless people in Europe who have died of the disease for more than a thousand years.
Black Death (1346-1353) is considered the most destructive disease outbreak. Traditionally, it was said to kill tens of millions of people, reducing the population of the old world in half. However, recent research has raised doubts about this seemingly unchangeable fact.
Three times in the hundreds of small pandemics have attracted attention because of their scale: Justinian Plague (542-750), the Black Death and London Plague (1666). In terms of the number of deaths, the second time was by far the most ruthless one. It comes in two waves. The first declined in 1351, and the second attacked twice as hard as a few years later. A total of 50 million people are considered dead, which means 30% to 50% of the European population. How do you know this?
is estimated to be based on written information at that time. They were left behind by nobles and members of the church, who were actually the few who could read and write at the time. The historical documents compiled by the Italians are quite detailed.
testimony from Polish and some other countries, and the situation is even worse. The rest of the reconstruction depends directly on assumptions based on certain scientific research, including those that study human impact on the environment.
We are talking in particular about pollen, whose spores help us trace large-scale events in the history of our civilization. Once they enter a lake or swamp, they last for centuries. Now let's do a thought experiment...
If crops are planted on a certain piece of land, the botanical record will contain pollen of wheat or rye . However, if human activities cease there, as farmers die due to a devastating epidemic, the sediments in the relevant period will be dominated by particles of wild plant . At least, that's the theory. To test this, the scientists analyzed the amount of pollen in botanical records in different parts of Europe.
The scientists concluded that at least some of them left no marks during the Black Death period. Polish historian Adam Izdebski and his colleagues collect pollen from 261 sites across the continent.
Facts have proved that the impact of the plague epidemic on them is very uneven. Samples were taken in 19 countries, and only seven of them had evidence of mass deaths in the form of agricultural land that was no longer used. In most areas, human activities have not changed, but in some areas there has been an increase.
However, scientific statements cannot be rewritten by just one stroke, especially if they are fundamental and have not been questioned for centuries. That's why most of Adam Izdebski's colleagues are reluctant to agree with his conclusion.
is considered one of the most important experts in this regard John Abbott said that European countries at that time were closely connected through trade routes and were fighting all the time, which almost guaranteed the widespread spread of the epidemic. He proposed that the labor shortage caused by the death of farmers in a region could be filled by immigrants who suddenly found ways to support their families on liberated land.
People also believe that the two waves of Black Death are caused by different viral strains. One of them is less dangerous, but still affects a large number of people. Therefore, some parts of the continent may indeed be less affected, but that doesn't mean there is no significant loss of life there.
