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Volcanic eruptions set off a chain of events that brought Black Death to Europe
- stevenjgarner 11mo agoResults reported in the journal Communications Earth & Environment [1] submitted to HN [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02964-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02964-0 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46151324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46151324
- justonceokay 11mo agoThe causal relationship here is murky. If have a hard time believing that a change in Italian shipping in 1345 was the only thing that allowed the bubonic plague to enter the otherwise hermetically sealed Europe. The reason for the plague was disastrous health and cleanliness standards.
- empath75 11mo agoI also think the collapse of the byzantine empire and the rise of the mongols would have lead to direct trade between the mongols and italians anyway.
- throw0101d 11mo agoWhile most folks have probably heard of "the" Renaissance: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance it was not the first in history: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_centur... There's a certain 'critical mass' of people and thinkers, as well as decent enough communications (roads, letters) to allow for collaboration, needed to achieve a flowering/growth of knowledge, and that was cut off by (amongst other things) the Black Death: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_late_Middle_Ages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_late_Middle_Ages
- anthk 11mo agoAlphonse X "The Wise". A Castillian king basically sanctioned a book on board games, from chess to a few less known ones with dice. Enough said. There's tons of difference between the 6th century and the 12th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_de_los_juegos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_de_los_juegos This would blow out lots of Anglo-Saxon minds with a very bad depiction of Middle Ages compared to the modern era from Newton. But, IRL, it was all about a gradual modernization of thinking. People didn't just became modern with the Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution. It happened tons of stuff in between.
- aaroninsf 11mo agoThis is the sort of headline you get when academic research must function as click bait. There are very few X caused Y statements one can make about historical events in good faith or with good cause.
- hinkley 11mo agoLong ago when the History Channel was still about History, they did a hypothetical “What if the 10 plagues of Egypt actually happened?” That was surprisingly plausible. I’m getting some vibes of that. The punchline of that hypothetical was that the hail and the locusts lead to wet grain being pulled into storehouses. A fungus that locusts can carry that is poisonous mouldered in the storehouses. The cultural tradition of giving the firstborn son a double helping may have reached fatal levels of exposure to the toxin, killing enough children to become a myth.
- ls-a 11mo agoSo the tsunamis of 2004 and 2011 could've caused covid?