Black Death may not have ravaged all corners of Europe as previously believed

 By Stephen Beech via SWNS

The Black Death may not have ravaged all corners of Europe as previously believed, suggests a new study.

The deadly plague - the most infamous pandemic in history - is estimated by historians to have wiped out half of Europe’s population in the middle of the 14th Century, as well as decimating West Asia and North Africa.

But new pollen data from 19 present day countries reveals that although the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, parts of Europe - including rural Ireland - experienced "negligible" or no impact at all

Although ancient DNA research has identified Yersinia pestis as the Black Death’s causative agent and even traced its evolution across thousands of years, scientists say that data on the plague’s demographic impacts is still underexplored and little understood.

Now, a new study shows that the Black Death’s mortality in Europe was not as universal or as widespread as previously thought.

An international research team, led by experts from Germany's Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI SHH), analyzed pollen samples from more than 260 sites in 19 countries in Europe to work out how landscapes and agricultural activity changed between 1250 and 1450 - around 100 years before to 100 years after the pandemic.

Their analysis, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, supports the devastation experienced by some European regions, but also shows that the Black Death did not impact all regions equally.

The research team explained that palynology - the study of fossil plant spores and pollen - is a powerful tool for uncovering the demographic impacts of the Black Death because human pressures on the landscape in pre-industrial times, such as farming or clearing native plants for building, were heavily dependent on the availability of rural workers.

Using a new approach called Big-data paleoecology (BDP), the researchers analyzed 1,634 pollen samples from sites all over the continent to see which plants were growing in which quantities, and thereby determine whether agricultural activities in each region continued or ceased, or if wild plants regrew while human pressure was reduced.

Their results show that the Black Death’s mortality varied widely - with some areas suffering the devastation the pandemic has become known for while others were hardly touched.

Sharp agricultural declines in Scandinavia, France, south western Germany, Greece and central Italy support the high death rates attested to in medieval sources.

However, many regions - including much of Central and Eastern Europe and parts of Western Europe including Ireland and Iberia - show evidence for continuity or uninterrupted growth.

Doctor Alessia Masi, of the MPI SHH and La Sapienza University in Italy, said: “The significant variability in mortality that our BDP approach identifies remains to be explained, but local cultural, demographic, economic, environmental and societal contexts would have influenced Y. pestis prevalence, morbidity and mortality.

"One reason these results come as a surprise is that many of the quantitative sources that have been used to construct Black Death case studies come from urban areas, which, despite their ability to collect information and keep records, were also characterised by crowding and poor sanitation.

"However, in the mid 14th Century, upwards of 75 percent of the population of every European region was rural.

"The current study shows that, to understand the mortality of a particular region, data must be reconstructed from local sources, including BDP as a method for measuring the change in cultural landscapes."

Doctor Adam Izdebski, leader of the Palaeo-Science and History group at the MPI SHH, said: “There is no single model of ‘the pandemic’ or a ‘plague outbreak’ that can be applied to any place at any time regardless of the context."

He added: "Pandemics are complex phenomena that have regional, local histories.

"We have seen this with COVID-19, now we have now shown it for the Black Death.”

The research teams hope that more studies will use paleoecological data to understand how the variables interact to shape past – and present – pandemics.