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It's not proven, whether this was the bubonic plague or not. see Black Death for this matter. and it is not proven either, if the death toll was as high as it is claimed here. - musschrott
Please see bubonic plague - for information on the disease and historic epidemics/pandemics. As with most historic events, we can't "prove" anything, but we can evaluate and discuss. It is true current scientists hold differing opinions (see bubonic plague alternatives as well as the written references). A general scholarly consensus says the Plague of Justinian was bubonic plague while the Black Death spread more rapidly due to the shifting of the disease from the bubonic to the pneumonic variety, with some septicemic plague as well. The Third Pandemic is considered to be a combination of the three plague varieties. Numbers are always an estimate (at best) from a historic source. I think the original author was quite clear about that and I left the concept in when I did my recent edit. WBardwin 06:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
At least some of the deaths from Justinian's Plague may have been from typhoid fever as well as Yellow Plague (Yellow Fever noticably different from bubonic from its jaundice tinge). Granted that bubonic sufferers, if they had time, would have been sufficiently weakened to catch typhoid fever in addition to their other woes. How this would abet Yellow Fever is not known to me, but some victims were definitely Jaundiced. The Yellow Fever spread north to Wales, Ireland, etc. Apparently they suffered no Black Plague there at that time. 67.8.201.227 02:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
My admittedly partial understanding: The evidence that this particular "plague" (pandemic) was caused by "plague" (Yersinia pestis) comes not only from reported symptoms but also from zoology, specifically the especially effective transport by, and transfer to humans from, Chinese black rats. These were the standard stowaway of the day (but have been displaced by Norwegian rats, who are not quite as "friendly" to the bugs). Jmacwiki ( talk) 22:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
It looks like there is new evidence from DNA testing that this plague was indeed caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis: Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague However, I am hesitant to alter the page since I don't fully understand the science behind it. In any case, this article should somehow be added to the page but I'm hoping someone with a better understanding will do so. -- Robin McNally ( talk) 11:12, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
10,000 people a day? Really? Wasn't the city's population only about 500,000 at this point? - Dmz5 19:12, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I have modified the empire's name in the opening line: "ERE or BE". This is not related to the controversy about the proper name for Justinian's empire (there is plenty of that at the Byzantine_Empire page). Rather, this is one of the few articles in which both names have appropriate uses. (a) Justinian's reconquest had the (very temporary) effect of reuniting the Eastern & Western parts of the RE, and a strategic project of this breadth only makes sense from the perspective that the two regions were "supposed" to be united. (b) However, the adjective "Byzantine" is used in several places, and "Eastern Roman" would be a stylistically poor replacement. (Arguably, "Roman" might be the right replacement, but that gets back to the whole BE naming controversy. ;-) Jmacwiki ( talk) 03:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
100 million deaths worldwide is a LOT (even now!). Does anyone know what fraction of the global population this represented? My guess: At least 20%, which might make it the largest catastrophe in the history of our species. Jmacwiki ( talk) 03:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia's world population page, it would be much more even than that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.185.115.193 ( talk) 22:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
It would be really nice to insert, or at least link to, a map of Justinian's holdings as of 540. Can anyone find one, and do this? Or at least the usual map of 565? (That one is present at Byzantine_Empire.) Jmacwiki ( talk) 03:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
The wording on this point is challenged with a note on "dubious - discuss". Specifically, the wording is, "could have credibly reformed the Western Roman Empire".
I believe the intended point of the text is not that conquering all of the former WRE - especially including Britain - was credible; only that conquering western North Africa, Italy, and either Iberia or Gaul (or both) might constitute a reasonable definition of a re-formed WRE (albeit as part of the reunited Roman empire).
Achieving that much, in the absence of this plague, seems entirely credible to me. (Justinian reconquered western NA and Italy, despite this plague.) Is there a strong contrary argument?
If not, any thoughts on improving the wording? Jmacwiki ( talk) 02:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Having stumbled on this page, I notice a couple dozen comments like "citation needed" and "dubious - discuss". I don't know who put them there, but this seems to me to be the work of yet another Wikipedian who doesn't actually write articles, but just criticises them. If you don't like what's written in the article, then do the work yourself and improve it. I'm not going to say what I really think of contributors like this, but please don't just drop these heavy handed comments everywhere in someone else's work. Roll up your sleeves and rewrite the damn thing -- or STFU. Schildewaert ( talk) 13:51, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
In my edit summary I did point out that some were already sourced. Eg:
"Procopius [1] recorded that, at its peak, the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople every day, but the accuracy of this figure is in question and the true number will probably never be known; what is known is that there was no room to bury the dead, and bodies were left stacked in the open citation needed."
Isn't that sourced? Then there's:
"The long-term effects on European and Christian history were enormous citation needed. Justinian's imperial gambit was ultimately unsuccessful. The troops, overextended, could not hold on vague. When the plague subsided, they retook Italy, but could not move further north citation needed. The eastern empire held Italy for the remainder of Justinian's life, but the empire quickly lost all territory except the southern part after he died. Italy was ravaged by war and fragmented for centuries as the Lombard tribes invaded the north citation needed."
Is that an appropriate use of citation tags? I'd say no. Here:
"Nevertheless it is possible vague that there has been a tendency to exaggerate the differential effects according to whom?. British sources are more likely to report natural disasters than Saxon ones in this era citation needed."
I removed the first two and left the last, the important one.
Could I ask about this: " A genetic study of the bacterium causing bubonic plague based on samples taken from the remains of 14th-century plague victims in London and a survey of other samples[clarification needed] suggests[how?] that the Plague of Justinian and others from antiquity arose from either now-extinct strains of Yersinia pestis genetically distinct from the 14th-century strain or came from pathogens entirely unrelated to bubonic plague." I'm not clear what we need to know, and why we need to know it, about the samples or how the study suggests ... - isn't that all in the sources? Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 09:20, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
The final paragraph of the Origins and spread section implies that the British were separate from the English. These days the English are a subset of the British. Are the English in this paragraph the Angles of the Anglo-Saxons? If so, referring to them as Angles throughout, instead changing the term to English without explanation would make it clearer to the reader. Or including an explanation of what the term English meant during the period would be another way to make it clearer. (Obviously I don't know too much about it myself.)-- Wikimedes ( talk) 00:12, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
The article looks OK to me ... however, other than in half a footnote (a citation of Mark Whittow, one of the foremost active historians of the early Byzantine periods), no hint is given that the Justinianic Plague's intensity, duration and spread have all been questioned can be found in the article. Only a very few sources from the period even mention it and there's no solid archaeological data ... so ... something might be added about the possibility that it was not nearly as serious as some recent popular histories make out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.98 ( talk) 15:10, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
It should go without saying that this is dubious, especially when given uncited, but just one example – smallpox entered Europe at the beginning of this time frame and broke out repeatedly for the next millennium. If memory serves, some weird leprosy issues were on-going as well. Is there a "new" missing from the sentence? or is this just a matter of defining epidemic up so it no longer applies to repeated massive infections? If so, we should remove the point or clarify that we're using the term in a non-obvious manner. — LlywelynII 22:53, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I am confused by the sentence at the top of the article that says Genetic studies have pointed to China as the source of the Justinian plague. I read the footnoted quote at the bottom and that seemed to indicate Egypt as the source, so i read the Times article which is cited and that seemed to be discussing plagues that were at a much later time in history. Have I missed something, or is this something which should be re-worded to be clearer. In other words, based on the source cited, I don't see how China can be the source of the Justinian plague. Trucker11 ( talk) 12:04, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
SAN FRANCISCO — The ancients had ample reason to view comets as harbingers of doom, it would appear.
A piece of the famous Halley's comet likely slammed into Earth in A.D. 536, blasting so much dust into the atmosphere that the planet cooled considerably, a new study suggests. This dramatic climate shift is linked to drought and famine around the world, which may have made humanity more susceptible to "Justinian's plague" in A.D. 541-542 — the first recorded emergence of the Black Death in Europe.
The new results come from an analysis of Greenland ice that was laid down between A.D. 533 and 540. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not all of it originating on Earth. [Photos of Halley's Comet Through History]
"I have all this extraterrestrial stuff in my ice core," study leader Dallas Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told LiveScience here last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Certain characteristics, such as high levels of tin, identify a comet as the origin of the alien dust, Abbott said. And the stuff was deposited during the Northern Hemisphere spring, suggesting that it came from the Eta Aquarid meteor shower — material shed by Halley's comet that Earth plows through every April-May.
The Eta Aquarid dust may be responsible for a period of mild cooling in 533, Abbott said, but it alone cannot explain the global dimming event of 536-537, during which the planet may have cooled by as much as 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius). For that, something more dramatic is required.
Ice core data record evidence of a volcanic eruption in 536, but it almost certainly wasn't big enough to change the climate so dramatically, Abbott said.
"There was, I think, a small volcanic effect," she said. "But I think the major thing is that something hit the ocean."
She and her colleagues have found circumstantial evidence of such an impact. The Greenland ice cores contain fossils of tiny tropical marine organisms — specifically, certain species of diatoms and silicoflagellates.
An extraterrestrial impact in the tropical ocean likely blasted these little low-latitude organisms all the way to chilly Greenland, researchers said. And Abbott believes the object responsible was once a piece of Halley's comet.
Halley zooms by Earth once every 76 years or so. It appeared in Earth's skies in A.D. 530 and was astonishingly bright at the time, Abbott said. (In fact, observations of Halley's comet go way back, with research suggesting the ancient Greeks saw the comet streaking across their skies in 466 B.C.)
"Of the two brightest apparitions of Comet Halley, one of them is in 530," Abbott said. "Comets are normally these dirty snowballs, but when they're breaking up or they're shedding lots of debris, then that outer layer of dark stuff goes away, and so the comet looks brighter."
It's unclear where exactly the putative comet chunk hit Earth or how big it was, she added. However, a 2004 study estimated that a comet fragment just 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide could have caused the 536-537 cooling event if it exploded in the atmosphere and its constituent dust were spread evenly around the globe.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.185.130.70 ( talk) 22:19, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
The article sites a "high estimate" of 25 Million, but US CDC cites 100 million. [2] I realize these estimates are wildly uncertain, but shouldn't the latter high estimate be used instead? Or maybe both should be presented.
61.28.160.70 ( talk) 04:29, 10 November 2014 (UTC) Tom
I know nothing of properly editing and citing Wikipedia articles, however, I found a better link with the entire research article covering the emerging evidence that contradicts many of the positions of the maximalist's view on the Justinian Plague. Please excuse my ignorance, but I wanted to contribute something I felt was valuable for a holistic view on this subject matter.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/51/25546
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Plague of Justinian/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
The article should have HIGH importance for the WP Middle Ages project. The article accurately states the cultural, political, and epidemiological consequences of the plague. |
Last edited at 22:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 03:05, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
(This post is somewhat related to the one above about Halley's Comet.)
The extreme weather events of 535–536 (despite the title continuing into the 540's) are included in the "See also"-section, but it seems to me that the World-wide famine and shortage of e.g. grain must have been a factor in the spread of the plague and/or in its devastating consequences. E.g., the import of grain on rat-infested ships and the exploitation of farmers to supply cities and armies, must have been intensified.
I have no idea where to look, but there must be valid sources discussing this, so that we can include a bit more than a "See also"-link?-- Nø ( talk) 10:37, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Mention of recent interdisciplinary research questioning the geographic, demographic and economic extent of the plague has been added to the introduction, but the body of the text is written as if this research were either non-existent ornot noteworthy. Kdammers ( talk) 01:20, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
Can someone with access to the ref after the statement have a look. It looks odd. Should one of the two be Roman? Agathoclea ( talk) 08:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
There may have been a disposition, however, to exaggerate the differential effects. A reason for dwelling on them is the absence of any allusion to plague in the earliest surviving literature of the English people. There is nothing until a typically prosaic reference to ‘much pestilence on the island of Britain’ in the entry in the Anjjlo-Saxon Chronicles for 664:32 an outbreak confirmed by Bede and others as the next major visitation of the plague on Britain and Ireland, this time with the English badly affected. But here again one has to remember how arbitrary the said chronicles can be, especially early on, in regard to subjects covered. Human ecology, in all its aspects, gets short shrift/' In fact, the total surviving coverage of the critical 540s is only sixty words.... just minimal interaction would surely have involved a high risk of plague transmission. It is hard to accept the double contention that ‘what trade there was between the rival camps was probably conducted by itinerant pedlars. Such men were unlikely to provide a sufficient channel for widespread epidemics to break out.’34 What can perhaps be allowed is that, in the more solid English enclaves in the more fertile parts of East Anglia and the Hampshire basin, mortality could have been kept comparatively low. Soon, too, Malthusian pressure [1] - that's probably already too much to copy. Doug Weller talk 13:03, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
An IP added a statement that some scholars think that the Justinian plague originated in Aksum. The source cited makes no such claim. It merely says that Ethiopia is one of the places mentioned as a source by ancient writers. I reverted but the statement has now been added back with two additional references to books. The first citation was not formatted, but the two new ones are fully formatted according to academic standards. It seems clear that the IP has not been suddenly able to consult these books and learn how to format the references. They have obviously been copied from somewhere. If they do support the statement, then I suggest the IP gives the source so that the issue can be discussed on this talk page. Dudley Miles ( talk) 12:24, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
User:Dudley Miles User:Martinevans123 See [2] [3] [4] [5] Doug Weller talk 17:11, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Gaul is known to have suffered severely; by virtue of its proximity it is unlikely that Britain escaped, although historical records of 6th century Britain are extremely poor, so there are no unequivocal attestations of the plague reaching the islands." I see now that there was some disagreement with an anon IP from North Carolina back in 2021? Martinevans123 ( talk) 10:14, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Plague of Justinian article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL |
This
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is requested that a global map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality. |
It's not proven, whether this was the bubonic plague or not. see Black Death for this matter. and it is not proven either, if the death toll was as high as it is claimed here. - musschrott
Please see bubonic plague - for information on the disease and historic epidemics/pandemics. As with most historic events, we can't "prove" anything, but we can evaluate and discuss. It is true current scientists hold differing opinions (see bubonic plague alternatives as well as the written references). A general scholarly consensus says the Plague of Justinian was bubonic plague while the Black Death spread more rapidly due to the shifting of the disease from the bubonic to the pneumonic variety, with some septicemic plague as well. The Third Pandemic is considered to be a combination of the three plague varieties. Numbers are always an estimate (at best) from a historic source. I think the original author was quite clear about that and I left the concept in when I did my recent edit. WBardwin 06:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
At least some of the deaths from Justinian's Plague may have been from typhoid fever as well as Yellow Plague (Yellow Fever noticably different from bubonic from its jaundice tinge). Granted that bubonic sufferers, if they had time, would have been sufficiently weakened to catch typhoid fever in addition to their other woes. How this would abet Yellow Fever is not known to me, but some victims were definitely Jaundiced. The Yellow Fever spread north to Wales, Ireland, etc. Apparently they suffered no Black Plague there at that time. 67.8.201.227 02:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
My admittedly partial understanding: The evidence that this particular "plague" (pandemic) was caused by "plague" (Yersinia pestis) comes not only from reported symptoms but also from zoology, specifically the especially effective transport by, and transfer to humans from, Chinese black rats. These were the standard stowaway of the day (but have been displaced by Norwegian rats, who are not quite as "friendly" to the bugs). Jmacwiki ( talk) 22:39, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
It looks like there is new evidence from DNA testing that this plague was indeed caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis: Yersinia pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague However, I am hesitant to alter the page since I don't fully understand the science behind it. In any case, this article should somehow be added to the page but I'm hoping someone with a better understanding will do so. -- Robin McNally ( talk) 11:12, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
10,000 people a day? Really? Wasn't the city's population only about 500,000 at this point? - Dmz5 19:12, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I have modified the empire's name in the opening line: "ERE or BE". This is not related to the controversy about the proper name for Justinian's empire (there is plenty of that at the Byzantine_Empire page). Rather, this is one of the few articles in which both names have appropriate uses. (a) Justinian's reconquest had the (very temporary) effect of reuniting the Eastern & Western parts of the RE, and a strategic project of this breadth only makes sense from the perspective that the two regions were "supposed" to be united. (b) However, the adjective "Byzantine" is used in several places, and "Eastern Roman" would be a stylistically poor replacement. (Arguably, "Roman" might be the right replacement, but that gets back to the whole BE naming controversy. ;-) Jmacwiki ( talk) 03:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
100 million deaths worldwide is a LOT (even now!). Does anyone know what fraction of the global population this represented? My guess: At least 20%, which might make it the largest catastrophe in the history of our species. Jmacwiki ( talk) 03:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia's world population page, it would be much more even than that —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.185.115.193 ( talk) 22:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
It would be really nice to insert, or at least link to, a map of Justinian's holdings as of 540. Can anyone find one, and do this? Or at least the usual map of 565? (That one is present at Byzantine_Empire.) Jmacwiki ( talk) 03:09, 2 August 2009 (UTC)
The wording on this point is challenged with a note on "dubious - discuss". Specifically, the wording is, "could have credibly reformed the Western Roman Empire".
I believe the intended point of the text is not that conquering all of the former WRE - especially including Britain - was credible; only that conquering western North Africa, Italy, and either Iberia or Gaul (or both) might constitute a reasonable definition of a re-formed WRE (albeit as part of the reunited Roman empire).
Achieving that much, in the absence of this plague, seems entirely credible to me. (Justinian reconquered western NA and Italy, despite this plague.) Is there a strong contrary argument?
If not, any thoughts on improving the wording? Jmacwiki ( talk) 02:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
Having stumbled on this page, I notice a couple dozen comments like "citation needed" and "dubious - discuss". I don't know who put them there, but this seems to me to be the work of yet another Wikipedian who doesn't actually write articles, but just criticises them. If you don't like what's written in the article, then do the work yourself and improve it. I'm not going to say what I really think of contributors like this, but please don't just drop these heavy handed comments everywhere in someone else's work. Roll up your sleeves and rewrite the damn thing -- or STFU. Schildewaert ( talk) 13:51, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
In my edit summary I did point out that some were already sourced. Eg:
"Procopius [1] recorded that, at its peak, the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople every day, but the accuracy of this figure is in question and the true number will probably never be known; what is known is that there was no room to bury the dead, and bodies were left stacked in the open citation needed."
Isn't that sourced? Then there's:
"The long-term effects on European and Christian history were enormous citation needed. Justinian's imperial gambit was ultimately unsuccessful. The troops, overextended, could not hold on vague. When the plague subsided, they retook Italy, but could not move further north citation needed. The eastern empire held Italy for the remainder of Justinian's life, but the empire quickly lost all territory except the southern part after he died. Italy was ravaged by war and fragmented for centuries as the Lombard tribes invaded the north citation needed."
Is that an appropriate use of citation tags? I'd say no. Here:
"Nevertheless it is possible vague that there has been a tendency to exaggerate the differential effects according to whom?. British sources are more likely to report natural disasters than Saxon ones in this era citation needed."
I removed the first two and left the last, the important one.
Could I ask about this: " A genetic study of the bacterium causing bubonic plague based on samples taken from the remains of 14th-century plague victims in London and a survey of other samples[clarification needed] suggests[how?] that the Plague of Justinian and others from antiquity arose from either now-extinct strains of Yersinia pestis genetically distinct from the 14th-century strain or came from pathogens entirely unrelated to bubonic plague." I'm not clear what we need to know, and why we need to know it, about the samples or how the study suggests ... - isn't that all in the sources? Thanks. Dougweller ( talk) 09:20, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
The final paragraph of the Origins and spread section implies that the British were separate from the English. These days the English are a subset of the British. Are the English in this paragraph the Angles of the Anglo-Saxons? If so, referring to them as Angles throughout, instead changing the term to English without explanation would make it clearer to the reader. Or including an explanation of what the term English meant during the period would be another way to make it clearer. (Obviously I don't know too much about it myself.)-- Wikimedes ( talk) 00:12, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
The article looks OK to me ... however, other than in half a footnote (a citation of Mark Whittow, one of the foremost active historians of the early Byzantine periods), no hint is given that the Justinianic Plague's intensity, duration and spread have all been questioned can be found in the article. Only a very few sources from the period even mention it and there's no solid archaeological data ... so ... something might be added about the possibility that it was not nearly as serious as some recent popular histories make out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.98 ( talk) 15:10, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
It should go without saying that this is dubious, especially when given uncited, but just one example – smallpox entered Europe at the beginning of this time frame and broke out repeatedly for the next millennium. If memory serves, some weird leprosy issues were on-going as well. Is there a "new" missing from the sentence? or is this just a matter of defining epidemic up so it no longer applies to repeated massive infections? If so, we should remove the point or clarify that we're using the term in a non-obvious manner. — LlywelynII 22:53, 7 February 2013 (UTC)
I am confused by the sentence at the top of the article that says Genetic studies have pointed to China as the source of the Justinian plague. I read the footnoted quote at the bottom and that seemed to indicate Egypt as the source, so i read the Times article which is cited and that seemed to be discussing plagues that were at a much later time in history. Have I missed something, or is this something which should be re-worded to be clearer. In other words, based on the source cited, I don't see how China can be the source of the Justinian plague. Trucker11 ( talk) 12:04, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
SAN FRANCISCO — The ancients had ample reason to view comets as harbingers of doom, it would appear.
A piece of the famous Halley's comet likely slammed into Earth in A.D. 536, blasting so much dust into the atmosphere that the planet cooled considerably, a new study suggests. This dramatic climate shift is linked to drought and famine around the world, which may have made humanity more susceptible to "Justinian's plague" in A.D. 541-542 — the first recorded emergence of the Black Death in Europe.
The new results come from an analysis of Greenland ice that was laid down between A.D. 533 and 540. The ice cores record large amounts of atmospheric dust during this seven-year period, not all of it originating on Earth. [Photos of Halley's Comet Through History]
"I have all this extraterrestrial stuff in my ice core," study leader Dallas Abbott, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told LiveScience here last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Certain characteristics, such as high levels of tin, identify a comet as the origin of the alien dust, Abbott said. And the stuff was deposited during the Northern Hemisphere spring, suggesting that it came from the Eta Aquarid meteor shower — material shed by Halley's comet that Earth plows through every April-May.
The Eta Aquarid dust may be responsible for a period of mild cooling in 533, Abbott said, but it alone cannot explain the global dimming event of 536-537, during which the planet may have cooled by as much as 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius). For that, something more dramatic is required.
Ice core data record evidence of a volcanic eruption in 536, but it almost certainly wasn't big enough to change the climate so dramatically, Abbott said.
"There was, I think, a small volcanic effect," she said. "But I think the major thing is that something hit the ocean."
She and her colleagues have found circumstantial evidence of such an impact. The Greenland ice cores contain fossils of tiny tropical marine organisms — specifically, certain species of diatoms and silicoflagellates.
An extraterrestrial impact in the tropical ocean likely blasted these little low-latitude organisms all the way to chilly Greenland, researchers said. And Abbott believes the object responsible was once a piece of Halley's comet.
Halley zooms by Earth once every 76 years or so. It appeared in Earth's skies in A.D. 530 and was astonishingly bright at the time, Abbott said. (In fact, observations of Halley's comet go way back, with research suggesting the ancient Greeks saw the comet streaking across their skies in 466 B.C.)
"Of the two brightest apparitions of Comet Halley, one of them is in 530," Abbott said. "Comets are normally these dirty snowballs, but when they're breaking up or they're shedding lots of debris, then that outer layer of dark stuff goes away, and so the comet looks brighter."
It's unclear where exactly the putative comet chunk hit Earth or how big it was, she added. However, a 2004 study estimated that a comet fragment just 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide could have caused the 536-537 cooling event if it exploded in the atmosphere and its constituent dust were spread evenly around the globe.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.185.130.70 ( talk) 22:19, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
The article sites a "high estimate" of 25 Million, but US CDC cites 100 million. [2] I realize these estimates are wildly uncertain, but shouldn't the latter high estimate be used instead? Or maybe both should be presented.
61.28.160.70 ( talk) 04:29, 10 November 2014 (UTC) Tom
I know nothing of properly editing and citing Wikipedia articles, however, I found a better link with the entire research article covering the emerging evidence that contradicts many of the positions of the maximalist's view on the Justinian Plague. Please excuse my ignorance, but I wanted to contribute something I felt was valuable for a holistic view on this subject matter.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/51/25546
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Plague of Justinian/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
The article should have HIGH importance for the WP Middle Ages project. The article accurately states the cultural, political, and epidemiological consequences of the plague. |
Last edited at 22:04, 9 March 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 03:05, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
(This post is somewhat related to the one above about Halley's Comet.)
The extreme weather events of 535–536 (despite the title continuing into the 540's) are included in the "See also"-section, but it seems to me that the World-wide famine and shortage of e.g. grain must have been a factor in the spread of the plague and/or in its devastating consequences. E.g., the import of grain on rat-infested ships and the exploitation of farmers to supply cities and armies, must have been intensified.
I have no idea where to look, but there must be valid sources discussing this, so that we can include a bit more than a "See also"-link?-- Nø ( talk) 10:37, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
Mention of recent interdisciplinary research questioning the geographic, demographic and economic extent of the plague has been added to the introduction, but the body of the text is written as if this research were either non-existent ornot noteworthy. Kdammers ( talk) 01:20, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
Can someone with access to the ref after the statement have a look. It looks odd. Should one of the two be Roman? Agathoclea ( talk) 08:40, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
There may have been a disposition, however, to exaggerate the differential effects. A reason for dwelling on them is the absence of any allusion to plague in the earliest surviving literature of the English people. There is nothing until a typically prosaic reference to ‘much pestilence on the island of Britain’ in the entry in the Anjjlo-Saxon Chronicles for 664:32 an outbreak confirmed by Bede and others as the next major visitation of the plague on Britain and Ireland, this time with the English badly affected. But here again one has to remember how arbitrary the said chronicles can be, especially early on, in regard to subjects covered. Human ecology, in all its aspects, gets short shrift/' In fact, the total surviving coverage of the critical 540s is only sixty words.... just minimal interaction would surely have involved a high risk of plague transmission. It is hard to accept the double contention that ‘what trade there was between the rival camps was probably conducted by itinerant pedlars. Such men were unlikely to provide a sufficient channel for widespread epidemics to break out.’34 What can perhaps be allowed is that, in the more solid English enclaves in the more fertile parts of East Anglia and the Hampshire basin, mortality could have been kept comparatively low. Soon, too, Malthusian pressure [1] - that's probably already too much to copy. Doug Weller talk 13:03, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
An IP added a statement that some scholars think that the Justinian plague originated in Aksum. The source cited makes no such claim. It merely says that Ethiopia is one of the places mentioned as a source by ancient writers. I reverted but the statement has now been added back with two additional references to books. The first citation was not formatted, but the two new ones are fully formatted according to academic standards. It seems clear that the IP has not been suddenly able to consult these books and learn how to format the references. They have obviously been copied from somewhere. If they do support the statement, then I suggest the IP gives the source so that the issue can be discussed on this talk page. Dudley Miles ( talk) 12:24, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
User:Dudley Miles User:Martinevans123 See [2] [3] [4] [5] Doug Weller talk 17:11, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
Gaul is known to have suffered severely; by virtue of its proximity it is unlikely that Britain escaped, although historical records of 6th century Britain are extremely poor, so there are no unequivocal attestations of the plague reaching the islands." I see now that there was some disagreement with an anon IP from North Carolina back in 2021? Martinevans123 ( talk) 10:14, 10 March 2024 (UTC)