Nobody Likes a Plague. But History Tells Us There May Be Benefits…
History tends to remember the Plague of Justinian, which swept through the Byzantine Empire and much of Europe beginning in the 6th century, as one of the great catastrophes of the early medieval world.
And in terms of death toll it absolutely was.
But a landmark study examining more than 15,000 European skeletons across two millennia found something about the plague's aftermath that complicates the straightforward disaster narrative in a genuinely interesting way.
The generations born immediately after the Plague of Justinian were measurably healthier than the generations that preceded it.
The mechanism is not complicated but it is counterintuitive…
The catastrophic reduction in population meant that the survivors had access to a significantly larger share of available resources.
Better food, more land, less competition for the basic necessities that determine health outcomes for ordinary people.
The result was an improvement in health markers across the middle and lower classes that the researchers were able to trace directly in the skeletal record.
Professor Jörg Baten of the University of Tübingen and his team of 75 researchers from across Europe spent a decade building this picture, examining remains from over 100 locations and assessing dental health, stature, diet quality, physical burden, and rates of violent injury.
What followed that post-plague health improvement is where the story gets darker.
From the Early Middle Ages onward, the data shows a largely consistent decline in health for the lower and middle classes, driven by population growth that gradually eroded the resource advantages the post-plague generations had enjoyed, rising social inequality, and eventually the climatic disruption of the Little Ice Age.
The research offers a sobering perspective on the relationship between population density, resource distribution, and public health that feels remarkably relevant to conversations happening right now about inequality, environmental stress, and what determines the actual health of ordinary people across generations.
Read the full study summary here >>
History tends to remember the Plague of Justinian, which swept through the Byzantine Empire and much of Europe beginning in the 6th century, as one of the great catastrophes of the early medieval world.
And in terms of death toll it absolutely was.
But a landmark study examining more than 15,000 European skeletons across two millennia found something about the plague's aftermath that complicates the straightforward disaster narrative in a genuinely interesting way.
The generations born immediately after the Plague of Justinian were measurably healthier than the generations that preceded it.
The mechanism is not complicated but it is counterintuitive…
The catastrophic reduction in population meant that the survivors had access to a significantly larger share of available resources.
Better food, more land, less competition for the basic necessities that determine health outcomes for ordinary people.
The result was an improvement in health markers across the middle and lower classes that the researchers were able to trace directly in the skeletal record.
Professor Jörg Baten of the University of Tübingen and his team of 75 researchers from across Europe spent a decade building this picture, examining remains from over 100 locations and assessing dental health, stature, diet quality, physical burden, and rates of violent injury.
What followed that post-plague health improvement is where the story gets darker.
From the Early Middle Ages onward, the data shows a largely consistent decline in health for the lower and middle classes, driven by population growth that gradually eroded the resource advantages the post-plague generations had enjoyed, rising social inequality, and eventually the climatic disruption of the Little Ice Age.
The research offers a sobering perspective on the relationship between population density, resource distribution, and public health that feels remarkably relevant to conversations happening right now about inequality, environmental stress, and what determines the actual health of ordinary people across generations.
Read the full study summary here >>
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