According to the BBC, our understanding of the Black Death has to be upended.

A volcanic eruption around 1345 may have set off a chain reaction that unleashed Europe’s deadliest pandemic the Black Death, scientists say.

Clues preserved in tree rings suggest the eruption triggered a climate shock and led to a string of events that brought the disease to medieval Europe.

Under this scenario, the ash and gases from a volcanic eruption caused extreme drops in temperature and led to poor harvests.

To avert famine, populous Italian city states were forced to import grain from areas around the Black Sea – bringing plague-carrying fleas that carried the disease to Europe as well.

Of course, “scientists say” is the usual powerlifting escape clause. Perhaps we are on net rather more receptive to the idea of a “climate shock” these days than that the disease outbreak was mere happenstance.

An alternative theory, and one that does not involve volcanoes, famines or climate shocks, is that at the Siege of Caffa (Crimea) in 1346, the Khan of the Golden Horde, his army afflicted by plague, catapulted dead soldiers over the city wall in one of the earliest attested examples of biological warfare. (I know what you’re thinking. This attempt was a failure, because the bodies weren’t infectious. The plague probably got into the city via the rats that infested the trench works.)

As the occasionally-reliable Wiki says,

The fleeing Genoese survivors boarded ships in a desperate attempt to escape the plague-ridden city. Unknown to them, they were carrying the plague with them, setting the stage for the pandemic’s spread to Europe. As these ships docked at various ports along the Mediterranean, the Black Death began to take hold in Europe, leading to one of the deadliest pandemics in history.

I don’t know what happened. Luckily, I wasn’t there. Trade was carried on from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean throughout the period, sieges and embargoes aside. There is no need to invoke a climate shock, famine, and sudden demand for grain in Italy to explain the Black Death.

Or, as the BBC seem to want to call it, the Black Death plague.

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19 Comments

  1. I had just read the BBC article, when yours popped up.

    The BBC should be careful – falling temperatures leading to famine and Black Death. Some people might draw the conclusion that warming is less scary than cooling. And that would never do, surely!

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Gotta love how this from the BBC article –

    “This “perfect storm” of a climate shock, famine and trade offers a reminder of how diseases can emerge and spread in a globalised and warmer world, according to experts.

    “Although the coincidence of factors that contributed to the Black Death seems rare, the probability of zoonotic diseases emerging under climate change and translating into pandemics is likely to increase in a globalised world,” said Dr Ulf Büntgen of the University of Cambridge.

    “Based on annually resolved and absolutely dated reconstructions of volcanically forced cooling, transregional famine, and changes in long-distance maritime grain trade from 1345–1347 CE, we argue that the onset of the Black Death most likely resulted from a complex interplay of natural and societal factors and processes. Although this unique spatiotemporal coincidence of many influences seems rare, our findings emphasise the increased likelihood of zoonotic infectious diseases to suddenly emerge and rapidly translate into pandemics in both, a globalised and warmer world31, with COVID-19 just being the latest warning sign.””

    Compares with this from the paper/study –

    “Conclusions

    We used climate proxy and written documentary archives to argue that a yet unidentified volcanic eruption, or a cluster of eruptions around 1345 CE contributed to cold and wet climate conditions between 1345 and 1347 CE across much of southern Europe. This climatic anomaly and subsequent transregional famine forced the Italian maritime republics of Venice, Genoa and Pisa to reconfigure their supply network and import grain from the Mongols of the Golden Horde around the Sea of Azov in 1347 CE. The unusual change in long-distance maritime grain trade prevented large parts of Italy from starvation and distributed the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis via infected fleas in grain cargo across much of the Mediterranean basin, from where the second plague pandemic emerged into the largest mortality crisis in pre-modern times.”

    So, if get this right, the “”perfect storm” of a climate shock” was due to “a yet unidentified volcanic eruption, or a cluster of eruptions around 1345 CE contributed to cold and wet climate conditions between 1345 and 1347 CE across much of southern Europe”.

    I can see the threat they highlight re “globalised world” & COVID-19 (international travel). But they still have to shoehorn in “warmer world”, which had nothing to do with COVID-19.

    Liked by 2 people

  4. The Little Ice Age: 1300-1850. Coinciding with a series of grand solar minimums, the most significant of which was the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715). Also ‘coincidental’ is the fact that during this period, there was a significant increase in volcanic activity. Not only did the average global temperature decline during the LIA (most pronounced in the extratropical northern hemisphere), but circulation patterns were disrupted, leading to regional droughts, deluges, icy cold winters, searingly hot summers and resultant famines and social chaos. Against this backdrop, history records some very notable and severe plague outbreaks (a disease which was recorded long before 1300), the most notable of which was the Black Death which decimated Europe beginning 1348. It is also notable that the Great Plague of London in 1665 occurred right in the middle of the Maunder Minimum and it was the very hot and dry summer of 1666 which created the ideal conditions for the Great Fire of London, which killed off any remaining disease carrying fleas and their host rats in the city, thereby ending the outbreak.

    I think on balance, there is a very good chance that changing climate and weather patterns do have a significant influence upon the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.

    That said, this fact of nature is just grist to the mill of the fake ‘climate crisis’ soothsayers and doom mongers.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Jaime, those are very good points. History has a lot to teach us. Unfortunately, climate alarmists learn the wrong lessons.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. There seems to be a couple of flaws in the argument. The BBC states

    This in turn caused crops to fail across the Mediterranean region. To avoid starvation, Italian city states traded with grain producers around the Black Sea.

    First is that the Black Sea is connected to the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles Strait, which is less than 40 miles long. If the weather in the Mediterranean region was adversely affected by volcanic eruptions, it is unlikely that the Black Sea was not affected, even to a lesser extent.

    Second is that crops were mostly produced for local consumption. Yields were extremely low, even compared to the Victorian era. There would not have been the surpluses to export. If the crops failed in an area people starved.

    I suspect that these experts did not take ‘O’ level geography at high school.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. Kevin – to be fair, they do state “cold and wet climate conditions between 1345 and 1347 CE across much of southern Europe“. So grain imports from what is now Ukraine (the breadbasket of Europe) seems plausible. bold mine.

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  8. The Ukraine had been supplying Greece with grain long before 1345. So if the bacterium causing the Black Death came to Italy via Black Sea grain shipments why wasn’t Greece affected even earlier? Something is very wrong about this hypothesis regardless of any climate connection.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. I believe Egypt was Italy’s main breadbasket in the 1300s (as it had been since the time of the Romans). So any diminution of grain supply must have affected Egypt . Perhaps non climatic reasons in Egypt caused a shift in supply- opposition to feeding Christian Europe? Need to increase supplies to Islamic states? Intriguing though the hypothesis is – linking together multiple strands of information and speculation, it suffers from a lack of supportive evidence.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. wow-we!! It has been argued by Thomas Van Houf (Utrecht University)that the innumerable Black Death fatalities caused a massive reduction in land cultivation, reforestation and climate change, ultimately resulting in the Little Ice Age. Have to stop thinking about this. My grinning muscles are becoming overworked.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. There is of course the theory that the Black Death of the Middle Ages was not primarily a bubonic plague outbreak – as is more usual, and which is spread mainly by rats carrying infected fleas – but a pneumonic plague outbreak, spread directly by humans exhaling Yersinia Pestis bacteria from infected lungs. Disease carrying rats would then not be needed as the principal vector via which the infection spreads. This might explain the extraordinarily rapid spread of the disease across continental Europe plus the very high death toll (pneumonic plague is more lethal than the bubonic form, where infection is confined to the lymph nodes). Why Yersinia Pestis would suddenly evolve to infect the lungs and be preferentially transmitted by airborne exhalation remains a mystery, especially as that particular plague variant seems to have gone back into hiding ever since, with pneumonic plague cases forming only a minority of modern infections.

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  12. Jaime – I think the initial inoculation is via the flea. The bacteria can spread to the lungs, and then there is patient to caregiver transmission, i.e. the pulmonary form. This has the capacity to be far more destructive and quickly spreading, but presumably requires close contact with a sick person. There is also a septicaemic version, where the bacterium gets in through an injury.

    Here you can read Marchione di Coppo Stefani’s near-contemporaneous description, which includes the symptoms:

    The symptoms were the following: a bubo in the groin, where the thigh meets the trunk; or a small swelling under the armpit; sudden fever; spitting blood and saliva (and no one who spit blood survived it).

    It’s often difficult to be sure what disease is being described when reading about ancient plagues – the people writing about it usually didn’t bother to record much about the symptoms, as they thought everyone who might read what they wrote would know what was meant. I suppose the periodicity of malaria and the lymphatic version of plague are a bit clearer.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Yes Jit, you need a flea to bite ‘patient zero’ as it were, who then goes on to develop pneumonic plague. But under the right circumstances, patient zero can spark a self-sustaining, human to human epidemic which does not require any more infected fleas to spread the disease. The key phrase being ‘under the right circumstances’. This is what may have happened when the Plague first entered Europe via Genoese ships docking in Sicily in 1347. Or not. We can’t be sure.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. JIT shame! Once again the BBC is falsely accused and maligned for merely reporting an interesting climate-related story as if it originated it. The volcanicity-climate change-grain shortage-shift in grain imports causing spread of Black Death in Europe hypothesis did not originate from the BBC but from a December 2025 scientific paper written by Bauch and Bunlzen (as the BBC acknowledges ). The BBC story was written by their environmental correspondent, and as best as I can judge it is accurate in her reporting of the original study.

    I would thank the BBC for bringing this interesting speculation to our attention.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Alan, as has been discussed elsewhere, a large part of the way media organisations shape opinion in the direction they want it to go, is not just by which stories they choose to amplify, but which stories they never mention. (Not saying there is any nefariousness here, despite the “climate” link.) In terms of the history of epidemics, it would be surprising if 1% of relevant stories reach the threshold that somewhere like the BBC report on it. Which leaves the other 99% unknown to non-specialists. Who selects, and on what basis, the stories that make the cut?

    I would hope that somewhere with the budget of the BBC would have journalists who do not merely cut’n’paste, or credulously report what a study’s author says. In this case, I found the hypothesis hardly merited consideration. As you know, I’ve been researching the rat flea for a little project of mine, so I have recently read extensively on plague up and down the centuries, and what I considered the “true” story is (relatively) fresh in my mind.

    The BBC has though generated some interesting discussion, agreed on that.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. JIT I should have thanked you for you for including the previous explanation for the introduction of the Black Death into Europe of which I was completely unaware (as was “she who must be listened to” who is more history attuned). This is also where the Guardian and BBC reports totally failed. Any new theory not only has to supply supportive evidence but also evidence or argument that throws doubt upon the interpretation previously accepted. Fleeing inhabitants of Caffa carrying the disease with them or via fleas explains why the Black Death affected Italian city states first and, as far as I can judge is not overthrown by any climate addition.

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  17. By the way, Alan – welcome back! It’s great to see you commenting again.

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  18. Thank you Mark. I have been wrestling with WordPress for some time now and finally have succeeded somewhat. Somewhat because I still have to undergo a complex series of actions involving my password which I have had to repeatedly change and present before acceptance. My last effort went wrong suggesting that it hadn’t been accepted. Reapplication resulted in duplication which I hope someone might sort out.

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