"New Study Suggests That The Black Death Wasn’t Nearly As" Topic

…Devastating As Originally Thought

"We often imagine the Black Death as a terrible tidal wave that consumed Europe, killing an estimated 50 million people. While it's impossible to truly know how many people died from the Black Plague, a new study based on pollen levels has challenged this staggering estimate. It suggests that while some European countries did suffer greatly from the plague, others escaped largely unscathed…"

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Armand

The study seems to derive its conclusions based on fossil pollen, arguing that that if large numbers of people died in the farming population then pollen from cultivated plants would go down while pollen from wild plants would go up and they aren't seeing that in most places. But they don't seem to take into account that considering how the plague was spread, rural populations would be far less affected than urban ones. So towns and cities would still have been devastated while the relatively unaffected farmers would have continued sowing their fields as they've always done.

We also already know that the Black Death was a great opportunity and enabled those who had previously not been landowners or independent farmers to step up a notch in society and take on that role. They bought the property the dead had left behind at a bargain price. This also caused huge wage inflation for e.g. soldiers because there was a new career path (i.e. farmer) that was arguably less dangerous than soldiering that could now be imagined by the relatively poor.

The Black Death was,in one sense, a catalyst for wealth redistriution. Not completely -as there was also a focusing of wealth by those not reliant on a hereditary system to pass on wealth. By which I mean the church and more importantly the Abbies and Monasteries which expanded their farm holdings and incresed the size of the lay brotherhood.

Thanks!

Armand

Been a few years since read through the 100 years war, many areas as I remember were fine, others a small town could be wiped out. But take from book was it wasn't even destruction of civilization.