One would have thought that an empire that could conquer so much of the known world, invent formalized sanitation, arches, pioneered early medical tools, concrete, the first bound book, and so much more, would have known not to use fossil fuels, hair dryers, ice makers, and plastics
Plagues in Roman Italy Linked to Climate Change, Scientists Say
A plague that ravaged through Roman Italy has been linked to extreme temperature drops in the region, scientists say.
The Justinian Plague—the first recorded wave of bubonic plague to spread through Europe—is thought to have begun in the year 541 CE in Lower Egypt. Within months, it had spread across the Mediterranean in ships to the center of the empire in Constantinople, or modern-day Istanbul. From there, the plague raged on until 590 CE, killing as many as 10,000 people a day at its peak.
By the time the plague had run its course, nearly half of the population of Constantinople had died, as well as about a third of the population of Europe.
Now, this was not the first plague during the Roman period. Indeed, the Antonine Plague of 165 to 180 CE and the Plague of Cyprian from 251 to 266 CE also devastated the Roman population. And, according to new research from the universities of Bremen and Oklahoma, these plagues all had one thing in common: they were linked to a changing climate.
The horror!
During the Roman period, temperatures in Europe were different to how they are today. “We could reconstruct that the climate (at least the late summer autumn temperature in middle/south Italy) was relatively to today somewhat warmer,” Karin Zonneveld, a professor of micropaleontology at the University of Bremen and the study’s first author, told Newsweek. “We see in our record that a cooling trend started at about 100 CE but it was not before about 130 CE that the climate changed such that it moved out of the range that was occurring in the previous centuries.
Yeah, because the world was moving from the Roman Warm Period into the Dark Ages. And, while disease outbreaks can happen during warm periods, and do, some of the worst occurred when moving from a warm period to a cool period. Regardless, it doesn’t matter, because this information should scare everyone because our current warm period makes us doomed
While modern medicine has advanced considerably since the time of the Romans, this data offers insights into how diseases might change in our own changing climate. “Within the scope of the current climate change it is of major importance to understand the links between climate and human health and we unfortunately do not understand these links as well as we would like,” Zonneveld said. “Investigating the resilience of ancient societies to past climate change and relationships between past climate change and the occurrence of infectious disease might give us better insight into these relationships and the climate change induced challenges we are facing today.
Yeah, just stop.
Actually, it was the crusades that caused temperatures to rise to such high levels air conditioners could not keep up with the demand and failed. The landfills quickly filled up with the discarded machines and impacted the climate for the next billion years.
“Bring Out Your Dead!”
The distribution of human infectious diseases are changing now as the Earth continues to warm. Parasites, viruses, bacteria and fungi and the mosquitos, rats, mice, snails, ticks that carry them have a most favorable environment. That said, the incidence of some communicable diseases could even decrease in certain areas!