Posted on 04/10/2008 3:16:15 PM PDT by blam
Italy: Plague victims discovered after 1500 years
Rome, 10 April (AKI) - The remains of hundreds of victims, believed to have been killed in a plague that swept Italy 1500 years ago, have been found south of Rome.
The bodies of men, women and children were found in Castro dei Volsci, in the region of Lazio, during excavations carried out by Lazio archaeological office.
News of the extraordinary discovery was reported in the magazine, "Archeologia Viva".
The victims are believed to have been victims of the Justinian Plague, a pandemic that killed as many as 100 million people around the world during a 50 year period in the 6th century A.D.
It spread through Europe as far north as Denmark and as far west as Ireland.
The archaeological find is the first evidence of the devastating impact of the plague.
The plague swept across the Mediterranean during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the early 540s and according to some historians changed the course of European history because the empire then entered a period of decline.
Carried by rats and parasites, the disease spread rapidly because families at the time lived in close quarters in poor hygienic conditions. A large number of the inhabitants in Castro dei Volsci were wiped out.
Modern scholars believe that the plague killed up to 5,000 people per day in Constantinople, now known as Istanbul, at its peak and later went on to destroy up to a quarter of the human population of the eastern Mediterranean.
During the black death, life expectancy at birth was - get this - 16.
It seems the english survived.
But it must have been brutal.
Imagine you are a 12-yo mother, with your first child, living on whatever you can.
By the time the child is four, it is an orphan, living like an animal.
How is a cottager better than a serf?
Some think a very large volcano erupted in the far East in 535 A.D. Summer temps. cooled and Arab traders brought the plague to Constantinople.
I can't read the Magna Carta.
That and everybody killing each other.
The average was an average. What ended up more often was that by age 16, about a third of children had lost both parents.
There’s a reason so many fairy tales have evil-step parents. It was a norm for the society.
Some thoughts of Professor Mike Baillie on that period.
"He believes that impacts from cometary debris may account for most of the downturns, especially the AD 540 event."
I maybe mistated - by age 16, half were dead.
It was indeed, an average.
The article isn’t very clear. Is this a plague or the plague?
"The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter."
What Marsh is probably referring to is a free man, working for a wage, owning his own house and a small plot of land.
A serf was allowed to own nothing, and was tied to the land. A virtual slave. His master was whoever owned the land.
It probably wouldn't do them any good if they did. The people that survived were mostly resistant to these plagues and were the ones that passed their immunity on to us. Thats why up to 80% of the Native American population was wiped out upon the arrival of the Europeans. They had no genetic protection against a wide range of diseases that had become mere minor annoyances to the Europeans.
***It was spread by seamen.***
Nah, that was AIDS.
Opps sorry, wrong seamen.
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Thanks Blam. And, wow. |
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Magna Carta - 1215
Black Death - 1348
No connection.
They have a dental plan.
Changed the balance of power between capital and labor.
In other words, just before Muslim expansion.
Who would stay with Lord "X" and his obligatory 120 days of service when Lord "Y" has openings for serfs at only 90 days of service? Thus a 'free market' system of valuating labor came about.
(A significant reason why I oppose open borders and Amnesty of any sort)
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