ROME — Long before the industrial revolution and fossil fuels, “climate change” was wreaking havoc on the health of ancient Romans. smithsonian museum the magazine claims.
Citing research published in journals scientific progress, smithsonian museum underscore Correlation between cold, dry periods in ancient Rome and “catastrophic bouts of deadly disease” from 200 BC to 600 AD.
Rome enjoyed a stable climate from 200 B.C. to 100 B.C., but then suffered “three periods of very cold weather,” all of which “coincided with recorded outbreaks of plague,” he said. . smithsonian museum Author Sara Kuta.
Marcantonio Raimondi, sculptor (printmaker), 1512-1513 The plague, drawn by Italy, hits Rome. (Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty)
The first cold wave that hit the Roman Empire between 160 and 180 AD caused diarrhea, fever, and pustular rashes on the skin, coinciding almost exactly with the period of the Antonine Plague (also known as the Plague of Galen) . Estimation Between 5 and 10 million people died, about 10 percent of the empire’s population.
The second cold period occurred between 245 and 274 AD and coincided with the Plague of Cyprus (250-266 AD). This epidemic claimed an estimated 5,000 lives each day in the Roman Empire.
in his work About mortality rateSt. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258 AD) explained Since death is only a transition from this life to eternal life, it shows the symptoms of the plague and exhorts Christians not to be afraid of this disease. Instead, Cyprian encouraged his fellow Christians to see this illness as an opportunity to live their faith fully.
The third cold period occurred shortly after 500 AD and coincided with the Plague of Justinian, the first recorded outbreak of bubonic plague.
Named after the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, this plague was the worst of the three plagues and ultimately claimed the lives of 50 million people.
Interestingly, all three of these ancient Roman plagues are thought to have originated in China and traveled west via the Silk Road.
Unspecified – circa 1754: Pope Gregory I during the Great Plague of 589 when the plague hit Rome. (Photo courtesy of Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
by studythe arrangement of three epidemics with sharp temperature deviations suggests a possible correlation between the two phenomena.
The link between the cold spell and the pandemic was so clear that “it was one of those ‘wow’ times as a scientist,” said study lead author Karin Sonnefeld, a micropaleontologist at the University of Bremen in Germany. Stated.
“The Roman Empire rose and fell, rose and fell,” says co-author Kyle Harper, a classics scholar at the University of Oklahoma.
“In some cases, very extreme crises occur in succession. And the fact that both climate change and pandemic infections were involved in many of those episodes is now overwhelmingly clear. I think so,” he added.
