Roman plagues associated with cold snaps

[guy]

 

There have been many previous posts about the plagues that affected Ancient Rome (see below). Studies show that three of the most brutal cold snaps were associated with the three best-known plagues in Roman history: the Antonine Plague (AD 160-185), the Plague of Cyprian (AD 249-270), and the Justinian Plague (AD 541-549).

 

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The research focuses on a long core of sediments drilled out of the Gulf of Taranto, the wide gulf under the "sole" of Italy's "boot." This area captures sediment washed out from the Po River and other rivers that drain the Apennine Mountains — essentially the heart of the Roman Empire, Harper said.

 

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To reconstruct temperature and rainfall, the team turned to tiny organisms called dinoflagellates preserved in the sediment. The life cycle of these organisms is very sensitive to temperature and precipitation. In the late fall and early autumn, dinoflagellates transform to a resting state known as a cyst that can be preserved in the fossil record. Because different species have different preferences, scientists can count the types of dinoflagellates that were thriving in any given year. In colder years, cold-loving species will be more plentiful, for example. In times of high precipitation, when river water spills into the sea carrying extra nutrients, species that prefer high-nutrient conditions will be more common.

 

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/devastating-roman-era-plagues-were-ushered-in-by-cold-snaps-study-finds

 

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk1033

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 1 by guy

[guidoLaMoto]

Part of the problem in making an accurate diagnosis after centuries have elapsed is that the descriptions of the signs & symptoms are lacking.....Livy uses the word pestilentia and its effect on the course of things once in each  of his first ten books of Ab Urbis Condita without mentioning even one symptom, so we have no way of guessing what the disease(s) actually was (were).

There's a difference between a plague and The Plague. I don't think anyone described the black, necrotic skin lesion (bubo) of The Black Death prior to the episodes in 1347 in Messina & Kaffa (the famous catapulting of corpses over the walls of the besieged city), so this new genetic confirmation of Y.pestis in Europe as early as the 7th century is an indisputable revelation.

I remember reading that one Al Gore of his day noticed that the towns in his area with the most stray dogs & cats also had the biggest problem with Bubonic Plague, so he talked the town elders into killing off all the dogs & cats... Bubonic Plague then got even worse there, the dogs & cats no longer available to keep the rat populations in check...A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.