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+--- Thread: Research Devastating Roman-era plagues were ushered in by cold snaps, study finds (/thread-15341.html)
Devastating Roman-era plagues were ushered in by cold snaps, study finds - C C - Jan 28, 2024
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/romans/devastating-roman-era-plagues-were-ushered-in-by-cold-snaps-study-finds
EXCERPTS: Cold snaps may have ushered in devastating pandemics for ancient Romans that killed countless people, new research finds. The new study links periods of climate variation with major pandemics and found that the three largest pandemics of the Roman period occurred during some of the most abrupt and deepest cold snaps on record.
There could be a mix of reasons to explain this overlap, said study co-leader Kyle Harper, a Roman historian at the University of Oklahoma and the Santa Fe Institute. "When you shake the climate system it really impacts the pathogens, ecosystems and, above all, human societies," Harper told Live Science.
[...] "The correlation between times when Europe was suffering under major outbreaks of infectious diseases corresponding to phases of cold climate was striking," Zonneveld said.
There are many reasons disease outbreaks and climate may be linked, Harper said, ranging from ecological changes that might make spillover of animal diseases to humans more likely, to changes in human resilience. In an agricultural society like ancient Rome, he said, farmers may have struggled to produce enough crops in cold periods, leading to malnutrition that left people susceptible to diseases.
[...] "Investigating the resilience of ancient societies to past climate change … might give us better insight into these relationships and the climate change-induced challenges we are facing today," Zonneveld said... (MORE - missing details)