Excellent questions! I suspect that big, densely populated cities were hit hardest in times of famine. Malnutrition quickly leads to disease (e.g. typhus) through weakened immune response and, of course, those will spread more rapidly where people are living cheek-by-jowl. But that is an intriguing question about the deserted medieval villages. I'll ask my mate Matt Green, who literally wrote the book on the subject of village desertion, if the eruption has been linked to any.
Excellent piece!
This new book looks worth reading too: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01179-1
Excellent tip, thank you!
If a third of Londoners were wiped out what happened over the UK as a whole? Could this account for some of the deserted medieval villages perhaps?
Excellent questions! I suspect that big, densely populated cities were hit hardest in times of famine. Malnutrition quickly leads to disease (e.g. typhus) through weakened immune response and, of course, those will spread more rapidly where people are living cheek-by-jowl. But that is an intriguing question about the deserted medieval villages. I'll ask my mate Matt Green, who literally wrote the book on the subject of village desertion, if the eruption has been linked to any.
Fascinating, as ever. Has any government ever addressed this possibly impending problem? Should I start stockpiling food now?