Detail of the mosaic of Justinianus I in the Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, ItalyCredit: Petar Milošević
Posted on 11/27/2021 8:28:59 AM PST by SunkenCiv
...bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia...
The Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.
For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated the impact of the Justinianic Plague and described it as an ‘inconsequential pandemic’. In a subsequent piece of journalism, written just before COVID-19 took hold in the West, two researchers suggested that the Justinianic Plague was ‘not unlike our flu outbreaks’.
['Civ note: IOW, the underplaying of danger of the Chinese COVID outbreak in 2019 led to the manufacturing of consent via a false historical parallel -- exactly the same approach being used in the spin in this article]
(Excerpt) Read more at cam.ac.uk ...
Detail of the mosaic of Justinianus I in the Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, ItalyCredit: Petar Milošević
The village of Barrington, in Cambridgeshire, presents the viewer with a quintessentially English rural scene: with its thatched cottages and village pub, and one of the best preserved and extensive village greens in the country, it could not feel further removed in space or time from the Mediterranean world in the ‘Age of Justinian’. Yet this village and its environs have revealed startling evidence for the external crises that convulsed the Mediterranean world at the end of antiquity, and which clearly reverberated as far afield as this picturesque corner of England. For near the village, at a site known as Edix Hill (about half-an-hour’s walk from the author’s home), archaeologists in the late 1980s and early 1990s excavated an early Anglo-Saxon burial site that would appear to go back to the sixth century AD.1 In 2018, a study of the DNA preserved in human skeletal remains found there, revealed that a number of those interred (including a woman and child buried in the same grave), had died carrying bubonic plague, a plague that literary sources reveal had arrived in the Mediterranean, probably via the Red Sea, by around the year 541, and which clearly extended its reach well beyond the ‘East Roman’ (or ‘Byzantine’) empire of Justinian.New Approaches to the ‘Plague of Justinian’ | Peter Sarris | 13 November 2021
Worse for him was the riots and looting in Constantinople by the citizens. The Nika riots were the most violent riots in the city’s history, with nearly half of Constantinople being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.
Kind of like BLM and George Floyd riots during the time of Covid 19...
The other GGG topics added since last digest ping:
And today, Istanbul remains a much nicer city to visit than Rome.
Sounds more like the riots after the Martin Luther King killing, DC and many other places.
Justinian should have raised dogs, not fleas...
The riots after the MLK killing were exactly like the riots before the MLK killing.
***Kind of like BLM and George Floyd riots during the time of Covid 19...***
Except the Emperor finally took the riots in stride and sent in the army. That was the end of the race riots. (Chariot race riots, that is)
I have vague memories of the justintimberlake plague. Dark times
Veddy intedesting!
‘Face
;o]
Or hippos. The hippodrome was such a letdown, lacking any actual hippos. Messed up.
“And today, Istanbul remains a much nicer city to visit than Rome.”
Haven’t been to either...what is it that makes Istanbul nicer (perhaps taking immigration seriously)?
They do this in order to claim current crises are the worst ever.
In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated the impact of the Justinianic Plague and described it as an ‘inconsequential pandemic’.
Controversial claims because the authors wanted to sell books. People who lived through it had very different words for it and it is difficult to exaggerate one's family dying. Here, for example, is what Procopius said about it:
During these times there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated. (more at the link) - History of the Wars, II.xxii-xxxiii
It set the stage for Arabic expansion from the East. Roman and Sassanid Persian garrisons were so depleted it was like punching an empty paper bag.
I know, right?
Always was surprised by that...droming hippos would be a sight to see, assuming droming was like throat singing...
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