How volcanoes helped spark the Black Death

Volcanic eruptions in the mid-1340s triggered a chain of events that brought the Black Death to Europe.

See full article...

 

[Random Toxicity]

Dude, I expected this to be from Beth accompanied by some really disturbing pictures.

 

[scortiusthecharioteer]

Pfft. The Black Death.....overhype late career trip from Yersenia Pestis. I preferred their earlier stuff like The Plague of Justinian.

 

[S-T-R]

Technically, we’re talking about the second plague pandemic.

Second bubonic plague outbreak, but there were other pandemics. The first was the Antonine Plague, believed to be smallpox, which broke out in the late 2nd century. It, with retrospect, ended the golden age to the empire and likely helped precipitate Crisis of the 3rd Century. From then through to the early Medieval, the empire would be rocked by periodic plagues. Each time impacted the state's ability to collect taxes and maintain order.

The first, known as the Justinian Plague, broke out about 541 CE and quickly spread across Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. (The Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, for whom the pandemic is named, actually survived the disease.)

There was no western Roman emperor at the time, so you can drop the directional indicator. He was augustus and basileus; Roman emperor.

The western imperial office was abolished by emperor Zeno in 476 and the imperial regalia was sent to Constantinople by Odoacer. Theodoric the Great is kind of an iffy case. Emperor Anastasius sent the regalia west with Theo (who dressed like an emperor), and was referred to by Anastasius as an "imperial colleague." He was western emperor-in-all-but-name, but he died in 526. None of his successors had that level of clout with the east.

Note that Belisarius reconquered the city of Rome ~3 years before the plague hit, so you don't even have that awkward "Roman Empire without Rome" aspect you get with most of Byzantine history.

 

[Kile]

While Milan and Rome were largely self-sufficient, per the authors, smaller urban centers like Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Siena, and Venice relied on a complex grain supply system to import grain from the Mongols of the Golden Horde via established trade routes along the Black Sea coast.

This is trivia, but at the time of the Black Death, Rome was much smaller than than these other cities, and wasn't even in the top 30 in western europe in the 1300s. By 1500 it was rebounding, and that quick rebound might have been partially caused by the effects of the Black Death.


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/4kdvo1/the_thirty_largest_cities_in_europe_by_population/

 

[RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha]

Lest not forget the effects of volcanism on the start of the "season changes" to create the events leading to the pandemic.
Sulfur Dioxide emissions, ash plumes high in the atmosphere that encircle the globe, temperature changes (drops), and other weather events tied to multiple eruptions (Russian Peninsula Holocene volcanoes...), now Alaska eruptions,..)
And you know, more to come.

 

[Northbynorth]

It must be hard to figure out a complex web of interacting factors so long ago. Volcanic eruptions weather patterns, regional food supply and trade, long range trade, demographics and population density, technical development, conflicts, population resistance etc. It might be easy to over focus on those where you can get decent data, and ignore those where you cant,

 

[Rival Vector Plot]

So, volcanic eruptions > some climatic change > crop failures > importation of pest-infested foods by crop failure regions > black death.

 

[mschira]

Maybe if we trigger a few massive volcanic eruptions we can slow climate change so we can continue to drive full size trucks?
Wouldn’t that be nice ? /s

 

[Bernardo Verda]

Maybe if we trigger a few massive volcanic eruptions we can slow climate change so we can continue to drive full size trucks?
Wouldn’t that be nice ? /s

Well... a slightly better idea than nuking hurricanes?

 

[Albino_Boo]

These trade routes existed for the best part of 1000 years by the time of the black death. During the Peloponnesian War (434-404BC) the Athenians relied on grain from the Black sea to feed the city and when they lost naval supremacy, they lost the war. At the time of the black death outbreak, Genoa had control of the southern coast of Crimea for the grain trade with Byzantium. Venice and Genoa fought a war over control of the Black Sea. The Venitians diverted the 4th Crusade (1202–1204) to attack Byzantium because they had just done a trade deal with the Egyptians. The Bordeaux Bristol wine trade was origin of the ton as a weight,. The tun was the largest barrel of wine size and ships were measured in how many they carried. So these trade routes were moving significant tonnage annually and not a one off thing caused by a famine. I think its stretching a point to say that the grain trade caused the black death when the trade routes already existed and had existed for significant periods of time.

 

[spVolt]

If I eat a diet of worm

The article's conclusion channels some pretty dated thinking. We just went through a pandemic where the world did effectively jack shit about it, and we used new technology to escape the problem. That tech and its followons are only getting better, despite the best efforts of demented clowns like RFK.

We probably aren't going to need much coordination - and that's good since it was definitively shown to be impossible (in practical terms, when the bar is near-perfection. It is not interesting that one group here or there did okay if 6 billion people didn't) across many, many countries. We're gonna have to solve this with biotech, and the good news is that's just about good enough now.

I just hope we can hold off the bird flu jump till RFK is out of the picture.

You are assuming that if Black Plague-related illnesses break out that (1) there will be a sufficient supply of antibiotics to treat all affected persons in all affected areas (2) those antibiotics will work. It would be a real bummer if doctors worldwide reached for the perfect antibiotic treatment only to find that massive overuse of that drug had already created a drug-resistant strain of the plague. No problem then, we'll just go with an mRNA vaccine... what's that? RFK Jr says we should all just die? That's it then.

 

[Albino_Boo]

TBH I don't think of bacterial illnesses as being of any serious epidemic concern in the modern world. They don't spread very fast (R0) relative to anything else. It's not like we live with constant infestation of rats and fleas. And, we're getting really good at chemistry. Just because we didn't have a ton of new antibiotics the past 50 years doesn't mean that is our inalterable destiny, etc. I think the prospect of resistant bacteria is a fairly low priority on the world pandemic preparedness list.

The real concern is viruses. Has been, will be.

Mutli drug restraint Tuberculosis kills around 150,000 people annually.

 

[None Given]

The Tien Shan mountains are east of what is now Kyrgyzstan.

 

[mpat]

The article talks about how three volcanoes set off the Black Death and even mentions the Justinian plague, but it seems to miss that the Justinian plague was possibly also set off by several volcanoes in 536:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536

I feel like that would have been an interesting tidbit to mention.

 

[numerobis]

The Justinian plague is the first Y pestis pandemic we are certain about. There’s some evidence of plague epidemics at the end of the neolothic in Europe, which may be related to why genetics shows a population replacement at the time.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07651-2

 

[Unclebugs]

A truly interesting read of using indirect evidence to create a fairly complex model. It seems to have taken decades for the Black Death to get around. Not today, we can do in days which COVID-19 proved. Of course we will all find out about it in less than a day. If RFK Jr. is in charge when that happens, I may have to move somewhere that does not buy his anti-vaccine/ivermectin delusion.

 

[numerobis]

Pfft. The Black Death.....overhype late career trip from Yersenia Pestis. I preferred their earlier stuff like The Plague of Justinian.

That was classic stuff, but how do you feel about their rock phase from the Neolithic?

 

[numerobis]

A truly interesting read of using indirect evidence to create a fairly complex model. It seems to have taken decades for the Black Death to get around. Not today, we can do in days which COVID-19 proved. Of course we will all find out about it in less than a day. If RFK Jr. is in charge when that happens, I may have to move somewhere that does not buy his anti-vaccine/ivermectin delusion.

The Black Death epidemic in the 14th century took only 7 years, not decades. Then there were follow-on outbreaks for a few centuries.

 

[Marakai]

<looks at USA, with current regime, especially RFK in charge of health>

<starts humming an old 70s song by Bachman Turner Overdrive>

 

[Pugilistas]

These trade routes existed for the best part of 1000 years by the time of the black death. During the Peloponnesian War (434-404BC) the Athenians relied on grain from the Black sea to feed the city and when they lost naval supremacy, they lost the war. At the time of the black death outbreak, Genoa had control of the southern coast of Crimea for the grain trade with Byzantium. Venice and Genoa fought a war over control of the Black Sea. The Venitians diverted the 4th Crusade (1202–1204) to attack Byzantium because they had just done a trade deal with the Egyptians. The Bordeaux Bristol wine trade was origin of the ton as a weight,. The tun was the largest barrel of wine size and ships were measured in how many they carried. So these trade routes were moving significant tonnage annually and not a one off thing caused by a famine. I think its stretching a point to say that the grain trade caused the black death when the trade routes already existed and had existed for significant periods of time.

I think the point was that the grain trade from the Black Sea got extended to the Mediterranean (prices going up as it was not the usual), and with it, it brought new infected rodent followers.

As an aside, I got a KWC bubonic plague vaccination once, apparently one troublesome enough that it was only given if you were going to places where the plague was endemic. I don't think they even use that anymore.

 

[mknelson]

Dude, I expected this to be from Beth accompanied by some really disturbing pictures.

Nah, judy ElizaBETH
Hancock

IYKYK

 

[davidalastairhayden]

With crop failures for several years, you're going to see a lot more weakened immune systems from vitiamin and mineral deficiencies. Cloudy summers in northern Europe would lead to a drop in vitamin D levels, too. That's a bad combo. And it's not like they had any defense against all the common illnesses that ravaged people.

 

[Emilio Kléber]

There was no western Roman emperor at the time, so you can drop the directional indicator. He was augustus and basileus; Roman emperor.

The western imperial office was abolished by emperor Zeno in 476 and the imperial regalia was sent to Constantinople by Odoacer.

Eh, he ruled from Constantinople, not Rome. So calling him Eastern is fair. To simply call him a Roman emperor, while it might be technically correct, could confuse ordinary non-Romaboo readers and lead to different objections. As you noted the Western empire had legally ceased to exist. The reconquest of Rome under Justinian was fleeting, it was lost a few years after he died and did not lead to a full or lasting restoration of the original Rome-based empire.

You have to draw the line somewhere, and the empire ceasing to be based in Rome (even if it was reconquered briefly), the root word of the adjective, is a pretty straightforward logical historical nomenclative breakpoint. Otherwise you have some people who would argue for calling German, Ottoman and/or Russian emperors as Roman emperors.

 

[bob_page_cousin]

If a certain RFK hears about this...
"We need natural plague immunity..."

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

This is trivia, but at the time of the Black Death, Rome was much smaller than than these other cities, and wasn't even in the top 30 in western europe in the 1300s. By 1500 it was rebounding, and that quick rebound might have been partially caused by the effects of the Black Death.


View: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/4kdvo1/the_thirty_largest_cities_in_europe_by_population/

Was London that big by 1050? I always heard it was more or less left to rot after the Roman withdrawal. After that there was chaos with Angle and later Danish invasions. And finally, 1066 and all that.

[In Ireland, to be fair, the Danes built cities - still the largest ones.]

 

[poltroon]

Maybe Ms. Ouelette just didn't write it up thoroughly, but this paper seems like pretty weak tea to me.

Here's how it reads to me: They wanted to believe volcanoes were the cause, so they found some evidence and strung the rest of it together however they wanted.

Now of course, volcanoes might be an ultimate cause, but there are so many factors in a pandemic that any smoking-gun kind of approach ends up being reductionist.

The volcano evidence is not new and is pretty strong. There's all kinds of amazing evidence around the volcanos too, not just the tree rings but in literature and paintings as well as ordinary records. The scholarship around it all is super deep and interesting and this article is the tiniest taste of it all.

 

[Albino_Boo]

I think the point was that the grain trade from the Black Sea got extended to the Mediterranean (prices going up as it was not the usual), and with it, it brought new infected rodent followers.

As an aside, I got a KWC bubonic plague vaccination once, apparently one troublesome enough that it was only given if you were going to places where the plague was endemic. I don't think they even use that anymore.

Venice bought grain from the Black Sea, Egypt and Tunisia normally. The Black Sea grain trade and the trans Mediterranean grain trade had existed since classical times. Rome was importing grain from North Africa and the Black Sea in the days of the Republic. These were established trade routes and had been so for the best part of 1000 years.

 

[Albino_Boo]

Was London that big by 1050? I always heard it was more or less left to rot after the Roman withdrawal. After that there was chaos with Angle and later Danish invasions. And finally, 1066 and all that.

[In Ireland, to be fair, the Danes built cities - still the largest ones.]

The Roman city was abandoned and there was an Anglo-Saxon settlement in what's now the East End. Viking attacks destroyed that settlement. As part of Alfred the Great's programme of fortifications, the old Roman walls were repaired and the square mile was reoccupied. By 1050 London had taken over from Winchester as the political capital of the country and a major trade centre. London was a major port until ships got too big for the Thames in the 1960s. In the early Norman period London expanded rapidly, by 1100 the city was being heated by coal brought by ship from the North East of England because it had exhausted the local wood supply.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

The Roman city was abandoned and there was an Anglo-Saxon settlement in what's now the East End. Viking attacks destroyed that settlement. As part of Alfred the Great's programme of fortifications, the old Roman walls were repaired and the square mile was reoccupied. By 1050 London had taken over from Winchester as the political capital of the country and a major trade centre. London was a major port until ships got too big for the Thames in the 1960s. In the early Norman period London expanded rapidly, by 1100 the city was being heated by coal brought by ship from the North East of England because it had exhausted the local wood supply.

That's interesting - thank you. Too much of my knowledge of London in those times comes from an inadequate history and indeed from Netflix's The Last Kingdom, which does not dwell on the fortification of London.

When you think of it, there had to be a reason why Harald met William at Hastings, instead of letting him tire himself moving further inland. Of course, armies were hard to support in those days, but they were just three days in from a battle with the Danes and could surely have used a break. There had to be something worth capturing there.

 

[SubWoofer2]

The Tien Shan mountains are east of what is now Kyrgyzstan.

Yes, part of the knot of mountain ranges. The paper says origin west of Lake Issyk-Kul.

the probability of zoonotic diseases emerging under climate change and translating into pandemics is likely to increase in a globalized world,” said Büntgen.

It is to be regretted that the US work done to prevent dire impacts arising from these foreseeable events was knocked on the head by the first Trump administration, during its anti-anything Obama pogrom.

this paper seems like pretty weak tea to me.

The point the paper makes is a nuanced one, where the concatenation of existing events and circumstances combined to result in ... well, the authors explain it well:

Here, we show that interdisciplinary investigations into the entanglements between weather, climate, ecology and society well before the Black Death are essential to understand the exceptional level of spread and virulence that made the first wave of the second plague pandemic so deadly.

I'm reading it from a systems theory and chaos theory angle. Think intensities, combinations, and dependencies, and straws which break the camel's back.

(Edit: the advance to the sum of knowledge is that the authors provide a new detailed chronology (including weather, price spikes, etc) and the authors view it as a globalisation problem, where the system of trade networks which allowed for population food security over the previous century, switched from being a solution to being a problem in 1347AD when the same networks introduced the germ to Europe and the Middle East from the Crimea.

But if you want a conspiracy theory, the 1347AD grain exports happened because Venice, Padua, and Genoa were starving (volcanoes as perhaps the tipping point), consequently they stopped their war with the Golden Horde and the Pope withdrew his trade embargo, thus permitting trade with the Horde. The returning ships carried contaminated grain. The Horde often used germ warfare against their enemies.)

 

[bspoel]

In the Middle Ages, the Black Death burst onto the scene, with the first historically documented outbreak occurring in 1346 in the Lower Volga and Black Sea regions. That was just the beginning of the second pandemic. During the 1630s, fresh outbreaks of plague killed half the populations of affected cities. Another bout of the plague significantly culled the population of France during an outbreak between 1647 and 1649, followed by an epidemic in London in the summer of 1665.

This paragraph makes it seem as if no outbreaks happened between 1346 and 1630, which is emphatically not the case. In this period, plague outbreaks recurred on a decadal timescale in western Europe. For example, in the Low Countries, in the period 1346-1500 plague outbreaks happened in these years: 1360, 1368, 1382-84, 1400-1, 1409, 1420-21, 1438-39, 1450-54, 1456-59, 1466-72, 1481-85, 1487-90, 1492-94*

I don't know why mentioning some of the last plague outbreaks of the second plague pandemic in western Europe is important for this article, but the impression that no plague happened in between is not right.

*Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, The social and economie effects of plague in the Low Countries: 1349-1500, W.P. Blockmans

 

[mpat]

Eh, he ruled from Constantinople, not Rome. So calling him Eastern is fair. To simply call him a Roman emperor, while it might be technically correct, could confuse ordinary non-Romaboo readers and lead to different objections. As you noted the Western empire had legally ceased to exist. The reconquest of Rome under Justinian was fleeting, it was lost a few years after he died and did not lead to a full or lasting restoration of the original Rome-based empire.

You have to draw the line somewhere, and the empire ceasing to be based in Rome (even if it was reconquered briefly), the root word of the adjective, is a pretty straightforward logical historical nomenclative breakpoint. Otherwise you have some people who would argue for calling German, Ottoman and/or Russian emperors as Roman emperors.

The empire stopped being based in Rome some time in the 3rd century. We don’t actually know when, but it was ruled from Mediolanum/Milan before the Tetrarchy. And saying that the city of Rome was completely lost to the Roman Empire when Justinian ascended the throne is also not fair, as the Ostrogothic Kingdom was nominally a vassal of the Emperor in Constantinople before Justinian brought it back under direct control.

Listen, I’m completely fine with making up a name for the later half of the Roman Empire, but drawing the line at 330 or 395 is absurd. The idea that there was a separate Western Roman Empire is Catholic Church propaganda to justify the idea of them creating new Emperors (leading to the HRE). If we’re to be fair and actually descriptive of what happened, the best place to draw a line is probably at the end of Late Antiquity - say 755 or so, when the city of Rome was lost for the final time. What was left was a Greek nation state based in Anatolia and the southern Balkans, far from the multicultural Enpire of centuries past.

 

[BabelHuber]

There also was the St. Mary Magdalene's flood in 1342, which was made much worse by the fact that most of the forests were destroyed. In fact, it was the time when Germany had the lowest amount of forest in history.

If vulcanic eruptions came on top, the disease hit a population which already was quite weakend.

This seems to be a usual pattern for pandemics. Also before the Justinian Plague, we had the Volcanic winter of 536.

Seems like plagues like weak populations.

 

[BabelHuber]

The empire stopped being based in Rome some time in the 3rd century. We don’t actually know when, but it was ruled from Mediolanum/Milan before the Tetrarchy. And saying that the city of Rome was completely lost to the Roman Empire when Justinian ascended the throne is also not fair, as the Ostrogothic Kingdom was nominally a vassal of the Emperor in Constantinople before Justinian brought it back under direct control.

Listen, I’m completely fine with making up a name for the later half of the Roman Empire, but drawing the line at 330 or 395 is absurd. The idea that there was a separate Western Roman Empire is Catholic Church propaganda to justify the idea of them creating new Emperors (leading to the HRE). If we’re to be fair and actually descriptive of what happened, the best place to draw a line is probably at the end of Late Antiquity - say 755 or so, when the city of Rome was lost for the final time. What was left was a Greek nation state based in Anatolia and the southern Balkans, far from the multicultural Enpire of centuries past.

Why on earth would you put the end of antiquity to 755? In my opinion, the end of antiquity is the breakdown of the antique society.

So no more central taxation, the death of the Polis, the end of bureaucracy etc.

Then you have some chaos and finally a new and different order. When you reach this point, you are in the early middle ages.

When you take Cologne as an example, about 450 AD it was ruled by the Ripuranian Franks. This is the start of the middle ages in this region.

Italy, on the other hand, kept its antique structures until well into the 6th century. In some cities under Eastern Roman control probably longer than the arrival of the Lombards in 568 or so.

In the Eastern Roman Empire, you could argue that the antique structures collapsed during the Arab invasions in the 7th century. When you have the Themes and the Kastra, you are in the middle ages I'd say.

So setting a single date for the end of late antiquity seems a bit pointless, no matter if it's 476 or 755. It depends on the region.

 

[numerobis]

Maybe Ms. Ouelette just didn't write it up thoroughly, but this paper seems like pretty weak tea to me.

Here's how it reads to me: They wanted to believe volcanoes were the cause, so they found some evidence and strung the rest of it together however they wanted.

Now of course, volcanoes might be an ultimate cause, but there are so many factors in a pandemic that any smoking-gun kind of approach ends up being reductionist.

Whereas it reads to me like:

Rare set of varied factors triggered Black Death​

 

[Oldmanalex]

TBH I don't think of bacterial illnesses as being of any serious epidemic concern in the modern world. They don't spread very fast (R0) relative to anything else. It's not like we live with constant infestation of rats and fleas. And, we're getting really good at chemistry. Just because we didn't have a ton of new antibiotics the past 50 years doesn't mean that is our inalterable destiny, etc. I think the prospect of resistant bacteria is a fairly low priority on the world pandemic preparedness list.

The real concern is viruses. Has been, will be.

Get staph aureus to become completely multi-drug resistant, or a great number of other bacterial nasties picking it up, and then doing gene transfers into other bacterial pathogens, and we could be back in medieval times again, were one pinprick could carry a modest chance of death. My favorite plague is "English Sweating Disease", which put Henry VIII on the throne. Non-symptomatic in the morning, dead before midnight. Probably bacterial, but provenance still totally unknown. Better make sure you are not out of network if that revives itself.