History is a set of lies agreed upon — Napoleon Bonaparte
He was right about that. It’s essentially certain that death estimates for the Black Plague are far, far lower than reality. An examination of population growth of mankind throughout all history shows only one period of decline. Not WWI, not WWII, not the late 1940s Chinese civil war.
Plague in the 1300s. Plague took global population down sharply, and it’s best to remember the North/South American hemisphere was untouched. Had it been involved, the numbers might have gotten low enough to threaten genetic scarcity and eventual extinction.
The Yuan Dynasty was smashed by Plague. Entire provinces suffered 100% casualties.
Population growth in Europe ended via plague. It did not resume until Columbus brought the potato back in the late 1400s. Most plague deaths were actually not from the disease. What killed people was the lack of farmers. It killed farmers because rats were in the fields looking for food. No farmers, no cities.
Oxen Ford, Oxford’s original name, was home to religious academics and they focused on record keeping of the surrounding villages. The numbers are very clear. 5 deaths in a week, then 8, then 10, then 15, relentlessly. And then suddenly, 100, 300, 500 and then . . . no more records. Medicine explains this. Flea bites, infection, bateria progresses and kills. But eventually, statistically, some patient who was stronger than others would last long enough for the bacteria to reach the lungs. And then, a cough. People who breathed it in saw their first point of infection in the lungs and they coughed too.
Explosion of numbers, and then the record keepers die.
We(all male) were put into a room and played cards for 8 hours. The "guardians" were history majors if you needed to go to the bathroom.
Well anyway, I got lunch and dinner, and caught the mild cold, but I was paid $300, which was a lot back in the 80's