Scientists at the University of Maryland have developed a mathematical model of the spread of the plague in 542, the year of the Byzantine Empire. The study is published in the journal PLOS One.
Since the beginning of the XXI century, scientists are paying more attention to a series of epidemics that began with the Justinian’s plague, the first part of the earliest plague pandemic (about 541-750 ad). Historians have outlined two broad paradigms for the development of Justinian’s plague. Maximalists believe that Justiniana plague led to catastrophic mortality, killing over several years from a quarter to half of the population of the Eastern Roman Empire or to a hundred million people. The plague has become a symbol of a deadly and destructive disease. Provides data, for example, in Constantinople killed more than half of the population of the city is around 300 thousand people with a population of 500 thousand.
Their opponents claim that these estimates of mortality from the plague exaggerated, and provide proof of the absence of serious demographic changes during this period.
Procopius, the most important witness of Justinian’s plague, says: “Now the disease in Byzantium, proceeded for four months, and its greatest virulence lasted about three. And at first the deaths were a little more than normal, then the mortality rose still more, and then the number of dead reached five thousand each day, and then again came to ten thousand and more.”
Historians argue about how to treat such vague estimates, and are more critical of him. It seems unlikely that the authorities believed the bodies when, sources say, people took to the streets, the corpses remained unburied, and the government closed.
the value of the research of Maryland scientists that they are using modern methodological techniques, has created detailed mathematical models for each type of plague, put them on scant factual data. In the end, they found that none of the models reproduce the dynamics of the pandemic, which was described by her contemporaries. The spread of the plague could not be uniform, they say, it depended on climate and population density. It was denied by the “maximalist” version, according to which damage of Justinian’s plague were distributed evenly over the Mediterranean during the sixth century of our era.
were also explored ways of transmission. Modern plague, the closest equivalent to the historical plague, is based on numerous reservoirs forest rodents with periodic incursions in the population of domestic animals and humans. However, epidemiological path of the spread of Justinian’s plague remains unclear. Presumably, the main vectors that spread it among the people, there were rats – but at the same time�� there is very little data on sufficient number of rats in the Mediterranean VI-IX centuries for the maintenance of the pandemic. Not convincing, and the version of the vector control of the ectoparasites, such as lice and fleas.
“Because the primary sources contain virtually no specific evidence about the method of transmission of Justinian’s plague, we have developed a number of dynamic models of ordinary differential equations, which represent hypothetical transmission path, based on current understanding of the etiology and transmission of plague, scientists. – Then we compared the results of these models with informal data from primary sources to test hypotheses in contemporary historical studies on the transmission path and the potential magnitude of the outbreak”.
Results comprising the detected duration flashes, the maximum mortality rate per day and total mortality showed that flash isn’t the plague in the middle ages was not as deadly as attributed to the pandemic.
