In fact, before the Black Death came to Europe, people were dying of diseases that would not have been fatal in good years.
The effects of these diseases are particularly devastating for children, as even those who survive are highly susceptible and have severely compromised immune systems.
Low immunity, climate change, economic inequality, political instability and violence paved the way for the pandemic in the Middle Ages.
Europe before the Black Death
In the decades following the Great Famine, as food became increasingly scarce, prices climbed unpredictably, depriving even the poor of access to staple foods.
The plan for future crops keeps hope alive, and when spring comes, hope is dashed and flooded fields prevent seeds from germinating.
People spent the cold summers and autumns and began to forage. But hunting was limited to the nobility, and even those who risked the death penalty for poaching found very little prey.
Wages can't keep pace with rising costs, and those who live in towns and rely on markets spend less on scarce food. Therefore, people died even before the Black Death came to Europe.
In medieval Europe, however, the pandemic revived old conspiracy theories that linked Jews to public water poisoning.
Dozens of Jewish communities were attacked, and thousands of residents were massacred in the Rhineland, southern France and parts of the Christian kingdom of Spain.
Anti-Semitic sentiment and propaganda
A major archaeological and forensic study published in 2014 revealed that hundreds of Jews in the Catalan town of Tárrega, including children, the elderly and the disabled, were brutally hacked to death with sticks by their Christian neighbors, with whom they lived for generations.
Efforts to prevent such pogroms are often ineffective and do little to address the root causes of anti-Semitism hostility. For example, the city council of the German city of Cologne wrote to its counterparts in Strasbourg in 1349:
Now all sorts of rumors are flying against Judaism and Jews, caused by the unexpected and unparalleled death of Christians.
Throughout our city, as in yours, many people are clamoring that this death was originally caused by poisoning of springs and wells and is still spreading, and that the Jews must have thrown poisonous substances into it.
When we learned that Jews in several small towns and villages had been seriously charged with their deaths, we began a thorough investigation.
But if the murder of Jews is allowed, it can lead to the kind of anger and riot that provokes popular resistance among the ordinary people that in the past plunged cities into misery and desolation.
Therefore, we intend to prohibit any harassment of Jews in our city because of these rumors, but faithfully defend them and guarantee their safety.
Although the citizens of Cologne called the plague an "act of God" and not an act of the Jews, this explanation proved not to be as convincing as that driven by centuries of anti-Semitic sentiment and propaganda.
Common theme
The story of the Black Death is also part of our medieval legacy, which is just beginning to be carefully revived and replaced in a global context. If we look at these findings from a bird's-eye view, here are some common themes that stand out:
First, anthropogenic overreach, whether through activities that exacerbate climate change, unsustainable farming and extractive practices, or encroachment on animal habitats, will stimulate the conditions for the outbreak and spread of zoonotic diseases.
Second, weakened government systems and systemic inequalities in socio-economic conditions have contributed to the spread of the pandemic and caused disproportionate suffering to marginalized populations.
Thirdly, the breakdown of fragile institutions, community norms and neighbourhood relations will lead to or rekindle scapegoating, structural racism and violence.
Fourth, unbalanced or uninformed public health responses can exacerbate problems, even when and where people have access to accurate information.
Finally, epidemics have exacerbated long-standing social, economic and political problems that in the past have always led to popular rebellion, civil unrest and even more authoritarian repression.
Human response to crisis
To acknowledge these historically established facts is not to succumb to despair.
History is a huge laboratory in which we can observe a series of human responses to crises and difficulties.
If we know and recognize that zoonotic diseases are inevitable and can lead to mass deaths in such situations, we can develop policies and systems to prevent this at local and global scales.
As medical researchers David M. Morens and Jeffery K. Taubenberger wrote in 2018:
Although future pandemics may not be preventable, we have extensive knowledge in pandemic risk management, including standard public health measures to protect individuals, and more effective cooperation between medicine and public health.
There is also reason to believe that we can successfully implement community-based preventive measures to slow the spread of the pandemic virus, buying time for vaccination manufacturing and seasonal reduction of transmission.
However, these recommendations are based on a very short-term view of history and assume that the "world's deadliest epidemic" is the 1918-1919 pandemic.
The deeper point tells us that humanity will not respond to the horrors and wounds of the plague with universal reason. This is also a historical fact.
Instead of viewing medieval plague doctors with beaked hoods as ignorant and irrational Gothic figures of the past, we need to put on our own personal protective gear and face the image in the mirror.
What caused the Black Death outbreak?
Yersinia pestis, which causes the Black Death, was shown in 2015 to be at least 5,000 years old.
That is, it became popular at the beginning of the Bronze Age, around 3000 BC, a period of increased urbanization, intensive agricultural production and long-distance trade.
Fragile ecosystems of early cities
Early cities, ancient and medieval, provided perfect conditions for breeding and cultivating pathogens.
In Mesopotamia and elsewhere, anthropologist James M. In the words of James C. Scott, they are "multi-species resettlement camps."
These cities were fenced off to protect the human inhabitants from other urban rivals and resource-poor nomads, heavily dependent on intensive overfarming in their hinterland.
As a result, large numbers of mostly unfree agricultural workers had closer and more permanent contact with waterfowl, insects and disease-carrying animals.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written narrative of our time, praises the hero's hometown of Uruk, divided into three parts: densely populated neighborhoods, clay pits for the construction of more buildings; and livestock folds mixed with gardens and orchards to withstand periods of siege; Perfect Petri dish conditions for zoonotic diseases.
The fact that none of these very early cities survived for more than a few decades is a testament to their fragile, toxic ecosystems.
The first documented epidemic record
Thus, outbreaks of epidemics and more localized epidemics were and are inevitable.
Moreover, these outbreaks always have a tendency to further weaken already fragile socio-economic hierarchies.
In 430 BC, the first epidemic was recorded, as was this social collapse. It comes from Thucydides, an authority on Athenian exile who, after being expelled from the city-state, wrote the history of the war between Athens and Sparta.
In the winter before the pandemic, the Athenian general Pericles delivered a high-pitched funeral speech reported by Thucydides, in which Pericles praised the democracy of his city-state and praised the young people who died in the name of democratic values.
However, as soon as Pericles' high-pitched speech died down, the policies and tactics that led to war led to an outbreak of the plague. In three years, an estimated 75 to 1 million people died in the city, that is, at least half of the total population of Athens.
The wrong decision in Athens
Sadly, this population has only recently increased, when, at the request of Pericles, families and agricultural workers living in the surrounding area of Attica were told to give up their farms and crops to the Spartans in order to avoid exhausting the resources of the Athenian citizen militia.
As a result, tens of thousands of impoverished refugees moved with their livestock within the walls of Athens to camp in the narrow streets and markets.
Pericles believed that thanks to the powerful navy of Athens, the entire population could survive on supplies shipped to the port of Piraeus.
Complete the submission
Of the more than 30 pathogens that caused the plague in Athens, some came in with these overseas supplies, while others had just arrived from the countryside.
The result can be typhoid fever, combined with viral haemorrhagic fevers caused by person-to-person contact, and certainly exacerbated by malnutrition and overcrowding.
In addition, Pericles' strategy of relying on imports from the Athenian overseas colonies and allies proved unsustainable, as these colonies were destroyed and the Spartans themselves acquired a navy and blockaded the ports.
Athens succumbed to starvation in 404 BC and abandoned its empire, walls, and democracy.
Genome sequencing of Yersinia pestis
This is our first account of the epidemic.
And what about the first global pandemic?
Our understanding of this medieval plague has changed radically over the past decade, with much of the research published in the inaugural double issue of The Medieval Globe.
The study was catalyzed by the discovery of one of the large graveyards of victims of the Black Death in London, which was then excavated by a team of historians and bioarchaeologists.
In 2011, thanks to recent scientific advances, they were able to extract ancient DNA from the teeth of these victims.
This, in turn, led to the sequencing of the Yersinia pestis genome in 2013, revealing its morphology over time.
These include the mutations that led to the plague outbreak during the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinian, who Justinian himself contracted and survived in the 540s, and many mutations that occurred almost simultaneously—the polycut or Big Bang, which catalyzed the Black Death seven or eight centuries later.
Where does Yersinia pestis come from?
The findings also allowed researchers to study the home of Yersinia pestis, and the conditions under which it can be dormant or resurrected.
A few years ago, it was thought that its epicenter was the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in what is now northwestern China, where many DNA samples were found.
However, the pathogen has now been localized as growing and hatching northward, possibly in Kyrgyzstan.
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