A new study has looked at the effect of the Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics that hit the world. The plague, which lasted between 1346 and 1353, was believed to reach nearly every corner of Europe and is estimated to have killed 30%-50% of the population.
A new study, however, is focused on correcting these initial beliefs. The study is aiming to correct the imbalance of information concerning the coverage of the plague. Instead, it is attempting to discover ways for fully working out the real extent of the Black Death’s mortality.
Researchers are relying on pollen analysis because they can be counted in each sediment sample they had. In addition, counting and analyzing these grains can reconstruct the landscape and changes over time. While at first glance, learning about the agricultural landscape isn't related to the plague, it implies the human behavior exhibited during the pandemic. If Europe’s population did dwindle to the believed amount, a near-collapse of the medieval cultivated landscape should have happened. After analyzing pollen data and testing different scenarios region by region, the researchers found out that the Black Death did not equally devastate every European region.
In addition, they pointed out that the plague did not just spread through rats and their fleas. Local conditions, such as economic activity and population density would have influenced the spread of the disease. Therefore, differences in local conditions yielded different transmission rates.
Image credits: Gilles Li Muisis, Annales, Bibliothèque Royal de Belgique, MS 13076-77, f. 24v.; Izdebski et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution 2022
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