Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

Reduction in grain pollen indicates population decline, but not necessarily Black Death mortality

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, pages 1626–1627 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Matters Arising to this article was published on 05 September 2022

The Original Article was published on 10 February 2022

arising from: A. Izdebski et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01652-4 (2022)

Izdebski et al.1 recently employed a new dataset of pollen information to argue that the plague outbreak of 1347–1352, often referred to as the ‘Black Death’, exhibited heterogenous levels of mortality across geographical regions of Europe. The authors contend that this contradicts growing acceptance in the literature that the Black Death killed roughly 50% of the populations it entered and that this is the first empirical demonstration of heterogeneity in spatial mortality using systematically comparable indicators.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Izdebski, A. et al. Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 6, 297–306 (2022).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  2. Cohn, S. K. After the Black Death: labour legislation and attitudes towards labour in late-medieval western Europe. Econ. Hist. Rev. 60, 457–485 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Mengel, D. C. A plague on Bohemia? Mapping the Black Death. Past Present 211, 3–34 (2011).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Roosen, J. & Curtis, D. R. The ‘light touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick? Econ. Hist. Rev. 72, 32–56 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Borsch, S., & Sabraa, T. Refugees of the Black Death: quantifying rural migration for plague and other environmental disasters. Ann. Demogr. Hist. (Paris) 134, 63–93 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Poos, L. R. A Rural Society After the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991).

  7. Campbell, B. M. S. The Great Transition: Climate, Disease and Society in the Late-Medieval World (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2016).

  8. Bailey, M. The Decline of Serfdom in Late Medieval England: From Bondage to Freedom (The Boydell Press, 2014).

  9. Curtis, D. R. Coping with Crisis: the Resilience and Vulnerability of Pre-Industrial Settlements (Ashgate Publishing, 2014).

  10. Emigh, R. J. The spread of sharecropping in Tuscany: the political economy of transaction costs. Am. Sociol. Rev. 62, 423–442 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a NWO VIDI grant no. 016.Vidi.185.046.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

    Daniel R. Curtis

Authors
  1. Daniel R. Curtis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

The line of reasoning and writing of the reply are the entire work of the author.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel R. Curtis.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks the anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Curtis, D.R. Reduction in grain pollen indicates population decline, but not necessarily Black Death mortality. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 1626–1627 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01862-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01862-4

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing