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Zonneveld KAF, Harper K, Klügel A, Chen L, De Lange G, Versteegh GJM. Climate change, society, and pandemic disease in Roman Italy between 200 BCE and 600 CE. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2024; 10:eadk1033. [PMID: 38277456 PMCID: PMC10816712 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk1033] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2023] [Accepted: 12/27/2023] [Indexed: 01/28/2024]
Abstract
Records of past societies confronted with natural climate change can illuminate social responses to environmental stress and environment-disease connections, especially when locally constrained high-temporal resolution paleoclimate reconstructions are available. We present a temperature and precipitation reconstruction for ~200 BCE to ~600 CE, from a southern Italian marine sedimentary archive-the first high-resolution (~3 years) climate record from the heartland of the Roman Empire, stretching from the so-called Roman Climate Optimum to the Late Antique Little Ice Age. We document phases of instability and cooling from ~100 CE onward but more notably after ~130 CE. Pronounced cold phases between ~160 to 180 CE, ~245 to 275 CE, and after ~530 CE associate with pandemic disease, suggesting that climate stress interacted with social and biological variables. The importance of environment-disease dynamics in past civilizations underscores the need to incorporate health in risk assessments of climate change.
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Affiliation(s)
- Karin A. F. Zonneveld
- MARUM, Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Leobener Str. 8, 28359 Bremen, Germany
- Geosciences Department, University of Bremen, Klagenfurter Str., 28359 Bremen, Germany
| | - Kyle Harper
- Department of Classics and Letters, University of Oklahoma, 650 Parrington Oval, CARN 110, Norman, OK 73019-4042, USA
- Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Rd, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
| | - Andreas Klügel
- Geosciences Department, University of Bremen, Klagenfurter Str., 28359 Bremen, Germany
| | - Liang Chen
- Geosciences Department, University of Bremen, Klagenfurter Str., 28359 Bremen, Germany
| | - Gert De Lange
- Faculty of Geosciences, department of Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, University of Utrecht, Princetonplein 9, 3584 CC Utrecht, Netherlands
| | - Gerard J. M. Versteegh
- MARUM, Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Leobener Str. 8, 28359 Bremen, Germany
- Department of Physics and Earth Sciences, Constructor University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany
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Plunkett G, Swindles GT. Bucking the trend: Population resilience in a marginal environment. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0266680. [PMID: 35476782 PMCID: PMC9045639 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266680] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2021] [Accepted: 03/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Evaluating the impact of environmental changes on past societies is frequently confounded by the difficulty of establishing cause-and-effect at relevant scales of analysis. Commonly, paleoenvironmental records lack the temporal and spatial resolution to link them with historic events, yet there remains a tendency to correlate climate change and cultural transformations on the basis of their seeming synchronicity. Here, we challenge perceptions of societal vulnerability to past environmental change using an integrated paleoenvironmental and land-use history of a remote upland site in the north of Ireland. We present a high-resolution, multi-proxy record that illustrates extended occupation of this marginal locality throughout the climate oscillations of the last millennium. Importantly, historically-dated volcanic ash markers enable us to pinpoint precisely in our record the timing of major national demographic crises such as the Black Death and the European, Irish and Great (Potato) Famines. We find no evidence that climate downturns or demographic collapses had an enduring impact on the use of the uplands: either the community escaped the effects of these events, or population levels recovered rapidly enough (within a generation) to leave no appreciable mark on the palaeoenvironmental record. Our findings serve to illustrate the spatial complexity of human activity that can enable communities to withstand or quickly bounce back from largescale calamities. In neglecting to consider such local-scale variability in social and economic organization, generalized models of societal collapse risk overplaying the vulnerability of populations to long- and short-term ecological stressors to the detriment of identifying the social constraints that influence a population’s response to change.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gill Plunkett
- Archaeology & Palaeoecology: School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
- * E-mail:
| | - Graeme T. Swindles
- Geography: School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
- Ottawa‐Carleton Geoscience Centre and Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Newfield TP. Syndemics and the history of disease: Towards a new engagement. Soc Sci Med 2021; 295:114454. [PMID: 34627635 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114454] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2021] [Accepted: 09/30/2021] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
Historians of medicine and disease have yet to think through a syndemic lens. This commentary aims to point out why they should. Although there are several hurdles to overcome, our histories of disease and our understanding of current syndemics both stand to gain should historians begin to explore episodes of cooccurring diseases that share root causes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Timothy P Newfield
- Department of History, Department of Biology, Georgetown University, 37th and O Streets NW, ICC 600, Washington, DC, 20057, USA.
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