The Black Death was one of the most disastrous pandemics in human history. But what the life was like after this catastrophe? In order to answer this question Sharon N. DeWitte analyzed the skeletons from medieval graveyards. The archaeologist examined differences in survivorship and mortality risk between the pre- and post-Black Death populations of London. The results of this study suggest that health of the population improved after this epidemic.

There are compelling reasons to believe that the plague epidemic had had beneficial effects for the health of the subsequent generations. “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ DeWitte elaborates. In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages’ rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.

This interesting topic has been investigated previously. However, the secondary sources were analyzed mostly in the preceding historical studies. Unfortunately, it is difficult to generalize information from these sources, because they document lives of specific members of society. “The bioarchaeological data used in this study allow for the assessment of men, women, and children of various socioeconomic status levels, most of whom are typically missing from many historical documents “ the scientist notes. The analysis of this information enables researchers to make more reliable inferences about health tendencies of that time.

The study confirms that survival rate increased considerably among the members of the post‒plague population. The author of the study concludes that the study results highlight the power that infectious diseases have to shape population-wide patterns of health and demography over both the short- and long-term.

Article: DeWitte SN (2014) Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the Medieval Black Death. PLoS ONE 9(5): e96513. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096513, source link