"The oldest strain of the bubonic plague, which evolved to wipe out nearly half of Europe, has been discovered in a 5,000-year-old skeleton, scientists say." Source: Study Finds.
"Yersinia pestis, the bacteria behind the disease, was found in a hunter-gatherer whose skeleton was excavated in the late 1800s, according to a new study. The 20- to 30-year-old man, dubbed 'RV 2039,' was one of two skeletons found in Rinnukalns, a region in present day Latvia. Both skeletons disappeared but were then rediscovered in 2011 as part of the German anthropologist Rudolph Virchow’s collection. Two more skeletons were later recovered from the site.
"The discovery casts doubt on popular theories about the origin and spread of the bubonic plague, also referred to as the 'Black Death,' throughout history."
Note: I'm not sure how scientists identify plague bacteria in ancient skeletal remains. In this case, researchers ran "genetic sequencing and tests for viral pathogens and bacteria" on teeth and bone samples taken from four skeletons discovered at the site. When they found evidence of the plague in RV 2039, "the bacteria’s genome was then sequenced and compared to other ancient strains which had previously been discovered." This makes it sound like they found actual plague bacteria on the skeleton, but let's hope that isn't true. If it is, then it's only a matter of time before some archaeologist accidentally unleashes an ancient strain of this killer disease on an unsuspecting world.
Image: The skull of RV 2039. Dominik Göldner, BGAEU, Berlin.
Beautiful night views of the walls of Thessaloniki. The infant burials discovered recently were found "east of the Roman-Byzantine eastern walls," according to the Archaeology News Network.
"Dozens of infants and children, possibly victims of the great plague of the 5th century, have been unearthed in an excavation at the walls of Thessaloniki." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"More than 200 burials, 90% of them jar burials, packed in a dense arrangement, were revealed by archaeologists on Kastrona Street, where they were digging for the redevelopment and promotion of the outer rampart in almost the heart of the city. Apparently this was part of the Christian cemetery of the Eastern Cemetery, which was dedicated exclusively to infants and children in early Christian times (late 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries)."
Note: These infants apparently died during the Plague of Justinian (541 - 549 AD). At the time, Thessaloniki was the second largest city in the Byzantine Empire.
"Europe changed dramatically during the Bronze Age, with huge population shifts generally ascribed to the rise of new metal technologies, trading and climate change. But scientists believe that there may have been another reason for this social upheaval—the plague, possibly transported by, or on the back of, newly domesticated horses." Source: Phys.org (2019).
"Plague is forever linked to the Black Death, a pestilence that wiped out a significant portion of humanity in Europe in the Middle Ages. It likely originated in the plains of Central Asia. But plague was not a new arrival. Bronze Age remains, dating from 3000 BC, have in recent years been discovered to contain DNA from the plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis."
The widespread and relatively sudden collapse of Bronze Age civilizations that occurred during the 13th and 12th centuries BC has been described as ""the worst disaster in ancient history, even more calamitous than the collapse of the Western Roman Empire." It's still unclear what happened, but the possible causes include earthquakes, drought, famine, class war, foreign invasions and political instability; and it's possible that all of these factors came into play in a perfect storm of disasters.
In the top video, Professor Eric H. Cline, author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, suggests that plague may have been involved in the collapse as well. I'm not sure where the evidence stands right now -- in the interview Cline says there is no evidence, but this seems to contradict other findings that the plague was present in Europe before the collapse -- but it's a logical conclusion that the disease must have played a role. Epidemics always seem to go along with war and disaster.
"Many have claimed the Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750 CE) killed half of the population of Roman Empire. Now, historical research and mathematical modeling challenge the death rate and severity of this first plague pandemic." Source: Phys.org (May, 2020).
Note: This conclusion is based on mathematical modeling and modern plague research. The researchers "developed novel mathematical models to re-examine primary sources from the time of the Justinianic Plague outbreak. From the modeling, they found that it was unlikely that any transmission route of the plague would have had both the mortality rate and duration described in the primary sources."
Mathematical models are always suspect. Look at the flawed climate models used to support the global warming scam, for instance, or the discredited models created by Professor Neil Ferguson which were used to justify the absurd COVID lockdowns in the UK and to a certain extent in the United States. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if these plague researchers are correct when they say that the impact of the Plague of Justinian was exaggerated in the primary sources. Ancient and medieval writers aren't known for their reliability when it comes to things like the size of armies, casualty figures, and so on.
Byzantine historians like the great Procopius had no way of knowing how many people had died in the plague -- it's not like anybody was compiling accurate statistics back then -- but I'm not sure it really matters. The Plague of Justinian has been called one of the deadliest pandemics in history, killing something like 15-100 million people, but if this new research is accurate the outbreak was more like the Third Plague Pandemic which started in 1855 and only killed around 12 million people in India and China. There's a big difference between 100 million deaths and 12 million deaths, of course, but we're still talking about a major disaster.
This is an entertaining video if you can overlook the pitch for a male pattern baldness cure that occurs around the 3-minute mark.
"Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St. John's Dance and St. Vitus' Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected men, women, and children who danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, in the Holy Roman Empire (in modern-day Germany), in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518 in Alsace, also in the Holy Roman Empire (now France)." Source: Wikipedia.
The dancing plague died out in the 17th century. Nobody knows what it was or what caused it:
"Numerous hypotheses have been proposed for the causes of dancing mania, and it remains unclear whether it was a real illness or a social phenomenon. One of the most prominent theories is that victims suffered from ergot poisoning, which was known as St. Anthony's fire in the Middle Ages..." (Wikipedia)
Video from 2013.
"Other theories suggest that the symptoms were similar to encephalitis, epilepsy, and typhus, but as with ergotism, those conditions cannot account for all symptoms." Note: a disorder called Sydenham's chorea is sometimes referred to as St. Vitus' Dance, but it's a completely different thing.
Various other causes have been proposed. For instance, these cases of group mania (if that's what they were) "may have simply been the result of stress and tension caused by natural disasters around the time, such as plagues and floods. Hetherington and Munro describe dancing mania as a result of 'shared stress'; people may have danced to relieve themselves of the stress and poverty of the day, and in so doing, attempted to become ecstatic and see visions."
It's also possible that these outbreaks were staged rituals of some kind:
"Religious cults may have been acting out well-organised dances, in accordance with ancient Greek and Roman rituals. Despite being banned at the time, these rituals could be performed under the guise of uncontrollable dancing mania. Justus Hecker, a 19th-century medical writer, described it as a kind of festival, where a practice known as 'the kindling of the Nodfyr' was carried out. This involved jumping through fire and smoke, in an attempt to ward off disease. Bartholomew notes how participants in this ritual would often continue to jump and leap long after the flames had gone."
Nobody can explain what caused the dancing plague because we still don't know whether it was some kind of group insanity, disease outbreak, festival or public dance-o-thon. Personally, I like the ergot-poisoning scenario, but maybe St. Vitus' Dance was just the medieval equivalent of our modern flash mob.
An outbreak of dancing plague in the Netherlands (2011?)
"The Mongols, whose empire emerged in 1206, unwittingly moved plague through Central Eurasia in the thirteenth, not the fourteenth, century. Grain shipments that the Mongols brought with them to several sieges, including the siege of Baghdad, were the most likely mechanism of transmission. The fourteenth century plague outbreaks represent local spillover events out of the new plague reservoirs seeded by the military campaigns of the thirteenth century." Source: The Four Black Deaths, Monica H. Green, The American Historical Review (Dec. 2020).
Note: The Black Death devastated Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353 with sporadic outbreaks afterwards. If this new research is correct, the plague actually started in the previous century. According to Green, "...genetic approaches to plague’s history have established that Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of plague, suddenly diverged in Central Asia at some point before the Black Death, splitting into four new branches—a divergence geneticists have called the 'Big Bang'" and "The fourteenth century plague outbreaks represent local spillover events out of the new plague reservoirs seeded by the military campaigns of the thirteenth century."
These weird plague doctor outfits aren't medieval. They were invented in the 1600s.
"You’ve seen them before: mysterious figures, clad from head to toe in oiled leather, wearing goggles and beaked masks. The plague doctor costume looks like a cross between a steampunk crow and the Grim Reaper, and has come to represent both the terrors of the Black Death and the foreignness of medieval medicine." Source: Live Science.
"However, the beak mask costume first appeared much later than the middle ages, some three centuries after the Black Death first struck in the 1340s. There may have been a few doctors in the 17th and 18th centuries who wore the outfit, including the iconic beak mask, but most medieval and early modern physicians who studied and treated plague patients did not."
Note: "Medical historians have attributed the invention of the 'beak doctor' costume to Charles de Lorme, who adopted in 1619 the idea of a full head-to-toe protective garment, modeled after a soldier's armor. This consisted of a bird-like mask with spectacles, and a long leather (Moroccan or Levantine) or waxed-canvas gown which went from the neck to the ankle. The over-clothing garment, as well as leggings, gloves, boots, and a hat, were made of waxed leather. The garment was impregnated with similar fragrant items as the beak mask." (Wikipedia)
The long beaks attached to the mask contained scented materials which included "juniper berry, ambergris, roses (Rosa), mint (Mentha spicata L.) leaves, camphor, cloves, laudanum, myrrh, and storax. Due to the primitive understanding of disease at the time, it was believed this suit would sufficiently protect the doctor from miasma while tending to patients." (Wikipedia)
Nostradamus, the famous astrologer, physician and supposed prophet, was, at one time, a plague doctor.
"The discovery of mass burial sites is rare in Europe, particularly in rural areas. Recent excavations at Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire have revealed a previously unknown catastrophic mass grave containing the remains of at least 48 men, women and children, with radiocarbon dating placing the event in the fourteenth century AD. The positive identification of Yersinia pestis in sampled skeletal remains suggests that the burial population died from the Black Death. This site represents the first Black Death mass grave found in Britain in a non-urban context, and provides unique evidence for the devastating impact of this epidemic on a small rural community." Source: Antiquity (2020).
Thornton Abbey "was founded as a priory in 1139 by William le Gros, the Earl of Yorkshire, and raised to the status of abbey in 1148. It was a house for Augustinian or black canons, who lived a communal life under the Rule of St Augustine but also undertook pastoral duties outside of the Abbey. Officers within the abbey included a cellarer, bursar, chamberlain, sacrist, kitchener and an infirmer." (Wikipedia)
"The abbey was closed in 1539 by Henry VIII as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries" but kept operating for the next eight years by turning itself into a school.
Note: These deaths apparently occurred during the second great plague pandemic in England (1348-1349 AD) when something like one-third to half the population died in less than two years, according to Antiquity. This new (Feb. 2020) article goes into considerable detail about the history of the discovery of the mass grave and what is currently known about the site.
The population of medieval England was never very large. According to Wikipedia, there may have been around 5 million people living in the country when the Black Death reached Europe in 1348. By the year 1400, that number had dropped to around two million, a decline of at least 50 percent.
Comment: As bad as the current coronavirus pandemic is, it's nothing compared to the Black Death. If it's true that one-third to one half of the population in England died during the 14th century, an equivalent outbreak here in the States could cause something like 150 million deaths. As of April 12, we've had around 20,000 deaths from COVID-19, but it's hard to know how accurate these numbers are because the current policy is that if someone died with the virus then they died of the virus.
The coronavirus has been mild so far compared to the medieval plague or even the modern flu and other causes of death. To put this into perspective, something like 60,000 people died from the regular flu during the 2017-2018 season in the US and 37,00+ died from traffic accidents in 2016 alone. Assuming that the COVID-19 mortality statistics are correct, it's hard to understand why controlling the current outbreak is so critical that it justifies destroying the US economy.
Peter Schiff, one of the best financial commentators in the country.
"Researchers have compared medieval and modern plague pathogens. In a comparison of more than 300 contemporary strains of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, with ancient bacterial DNA isolated from victims of the Black Death (1347 -- 1351), a team led by researchers at University of Tuebingen obtained evidence suggestive of a bubonic plague outbreak in the late antique period (8th to 10th centuries AD). The study raises strong suspicions that the plague of Justinian, a massive pandemic that is thought to be in part responsible for the collapse of the East Roman Empire, may have been caused by the same bacterium implicated in the Black Death." Source: Science Daily (2012).
Comment: History is a lot more contingent than we like to believe. For instance, Justinian might have been able to complete his reconquest of the western Roman empire if the east hadn't been ravaged by the plague that "devastated and depopulated the Roman Empire [Byzantine Empire]," (Wikipedia). There were other factors involved -- the outbreak of the so-called Roman-Persian War and the incompetence and infighting of various generals in Italy -- but the plague put an end to Justinian's ambitions in the west and probably played a large role in the eventual collapse of the Byzantine Empire and its conquest by the Ottoman Turks.
Constantinople, once the eastern capital of the Roman Empire and later the capital of the Byzantine Empire, is now Istanbul, a primarily Muslim city. If Justinian had been able to reconquer the west, a reunited Roman Empire would have changed the course of European history in unpredictable ways. Ironically, the plague later intervened again when the Black Death devastated Europe, but this time its net effect was beneficial, leading to the collapse of the feudal system, weakening the grip of the church, and playing a large role in the birth of the Renaissance. It's unnerving, to say the least, that all these major historical events were influenced by a bacterium invisible to the naked eye which no one even knew existed at the time.
"Between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, many Neolithic societies declined throughout western Eurasia due to a combination of factors that are still largely debated. Here, we report the discovery and genome reconstruction of Yersinia pestis, the etiological agent of plague, in Neolithic farmers in Sweden, pre-dating and basal to all modern and ancient known strains of this pathogen." -- "Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline."