Ancient DNA Pinpoints Culprit Responsible for World's First Pandemic

Archaeology Magazine ^ | September 5, 2025 | editors / unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and "furious follies," a "terrible worm in an iron cocoon."

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
by Barbara W. Tuchman (Part I) [Audiobook] | 9:09:24
RedBookNook | 4.47K subscribers | 5,391 views | October 2, 2024

00:27 .Foreword
23:38 .01 - "I Am the Sire de Coucy": The Dynasty
01:23:53 .02 - Born to Woe: The Century
02:36:44 .03 - Youth and Chivalry
03:37:38 .04 - War
04:37:04 .05 - "This Is the End of the World": The Black Death
06:17:49 .06 - The Battle of Poitiers
07:42:34 .07 - Decapitated France: The Bourgeois Rising and the Jacquerie

[SunkenCiv]

Part II:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEUP4jHG7NY

Part III:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib7zL33YKKY

[Thapsus_epiphany]

I understand, audio book is an easier format.

Don’t give up on the book, though.

Tuchman tells the story of the14th century in France, when France was the great power of Western Civilization. She writes the story of the 14th century through a larger than life real-life character, Engerand De Coucy.

His family in Northwest France built the largest castle tower ever built in Europe, possibly anywhere. The size of a modern day skyscraper.

The castle and donjon survived until about 100 years ago when the retreating Kaiser’s armies filled it with explosives and blew it up, out of spite.

The castle and tower dominated the skyline of Northwest France for over 500 years.

Tuchman’s scholarship is impeccable, one of the great historians of the 20th century.

All of her books are thoroughly researched and take years to write.

She spent 5 years in France researching “ A Distant Mirror”, examining ancient documents in the original French.

Truly an astonishing work.

Cheers….

[nagant]

You don’t want to count the rats at a dairy farm at night.

[Thapsus_epiphany]

* sic…

The tower survived 500 years, not 100 years.

Typo…