The Justinianic Plague: An inconsequential pandemic? Lee Mordechaia,b,1, Merle Eisenberga,c, Timothy P. Newfieldd,e, Adam Izdebskif,g, Janet E. Kayh, and Hendrik Poinari,j,k,l aNational Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, MD 21401; bHistory Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 9190501 Jerusalem, Israel; cHistory Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; dHistory Department, Georgetown University, NW, Washington, DC 20057; eBiology Department, Georgetown University, NW, Washington, DC 20057; fPaleo-Science & History Independent Research Group, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, 07745 Jena, Germany; gInstitute of History, Jagiellonian University, 31-007 Kraków, Poland; hSociety of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544; iDepartment of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada; jDepartment of Biochemistry, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada; kMcMaster Ancient DNA Centre, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada; and lMichael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4L9, Canada Edited by Noel Lenski, Yale University, New Haven, CT, and accepted by Editorial Board Member Elsa M. Redmond October 7, 2019 (received for review March 4, 2019) Existing mortality estimates assert that the Justinianic Plague tiquity (e.g., refs. 5 and 6). Yet this narrative overlooks the fact (circa 541 to 750 CE) caused tens of millions of deaths throughout that the political structures of the Western Empire had already the Mediterranean world and Europe, helping to end antiquity collapsed in the 5th century and the Eastern Empire did not de- and start the Middle Ages. In this article, we argue that this cline politically until the 7th century (18, 19). paradigm does not fit the evidence. We examine a series of The extraordinary claims of plague’s effects demand extraor- independent quantitative and qualitative datasets that are directly dinary evidence, but the consensus maximalist position has of- or indirectly linked to demographic and economic trends during fered little evidential support when evaluated critically (7). The this two-century period: Written sources, legislation, coinage, existing direct evidence consists of several historical narrative papyri, inscriptions, pollen, ancient DNA, and mortuary archaeol- texts and 2 inscriptions (for texts, see refs. 6, 20, and 21; for ogy. Individually or together, they fail to support the maximalist inscriptions, see ref. 1). Additional evidence, such as the recent paradigm: None has a clear independent link to plague outbreaks molecular identifications of Y. pestis in late antique Europeans, and none supports maximalist reconstructions of late antique suffers from low temporal resolution (uncertainty intervals of plague. Instead of large-scale, disruptive mortality, when contex- 50 y or more) and a minuscule number of known cases (∼45). tualized and examined together, the datasets suggest continuity Moreover, the presence of plague does not in itself confirm a across the plague period. Although demographic, economic, and vast mortality in any spatial or temporal terms. A small quantity political changes continued between the 6th and 8th centuries, the of indirect evidence that correlates temporally with the First evidence does not support the now commonplace claim that the Pandemic, but is not necessarily causally related to it—ranging Justinianic Plague was a primary causal factor of them. from ambiguous texts to cultural and economic trends—has also been gathered (e.g., refs. 5, and 22, 23). Problematically, these Justinianic Plague | first plague pandemic | Late Antiquity | plague | data are rarely contextualized; rather, they are cherry-picked to Yersinia pestis construct maximalist interpretations of the JP while overlooking their uncertainty and low temporal and spatial resolution (24). he 3 plague pandemics (caused by the bacterium Yersinia In this paper, we attempt to determine plague’s potential ef- pestis — T ) are considered among the most infamous and most fects. We focus on quantitative measures that could reflect fatal—biological events in human history. Significant recent scholarship has investigated the so-called First Pandemic, which Significance began with the Justinianic Plague of circa 541 to 544 CE (hereafter JP), and reoccurred in western Eurasia and North Africa over the next two centuries (1–8). The Second Pandemic, The Justinianic Plague (circa 541 to 750 CE) has recently fea- beginning with the Black Death, devastated late medieval and tured prominently in scholarly and popular discussions. Current early modern Europe, southwestern Asia and North Africa, as well as consensus accepts that it resulted in the deaths of between a other regions (9). The Third Pandemic globalized Y. pestis and killed quarter and half of the population of the Mediterranean, millions in South and East Asia at the turn of the 20th century. playing a key role in the fall of the Roman Empire. Our con- Since research began on the Third Pandemic, scholars have tribution argues that earlier estimates are founded on a small used similar criteria and models to investigate the 3 plague subset of textual evidence and are not supported by many pandemics, frequently making assumptions about the nature of other independent types of evidence (e.g., papyri, coins, in- 1 pandemic by drawing upon precedents from the others. Early scriptions, and pollen archaeology). We therefore conclude researchers of the Third Pandemic explicitly connected it to the that earlier analyses of the mortality and social effects of the earlier two (10–12). For decades now, research on prelaboratory plague are exaggerated, and that the nontextual evidence plagues has been a multidisciplinary endeavor and scholarly suggests plague did not play a significant role in the trans- cross-pollination has reinforced the consensus that the first formation of the Mediterranean world or Europe. 2 pandemics had similar outcomes (e.g., ref. 6). Y. pestis Author contributions: L.M. and M.E. conceived of the project; L.M. and M.E. designed Recent isolations of DNA in prelaboratory European research; L.M. produced the visualizations; L.M., M.E., T.P.N., A.I., and J.E.K. performed human remains has validated the long-held assumption that the research; L.M. analyzed data; and L.M., M.E., T.P.N., A.I., J.E.K., and H.P. wrote the paper. – same pathogen was present during the 3 pandemics (4, 13 17). The authors declare no competing interest. Based on molecular and historical research, a broad consensus This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. N.L. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial (hereafter “the maximalist position”) has developed across dis- Board. ciplines that estimates JP mortality in the tens of millions, with This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- numbers ranging between 15 and 100 million, or alternatively, NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND). 25 to 60% of the estimated population of the Late Roman Empire Data deposition: The data aggregated in this study have been deposited in GitHub, (for recent estimates, see refs. 3, 6, and 17). This conception of the https://github.com/leemordechai/PNAS-JP. plague’s impact has shaped modern histories of Eurasia. Plague 1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: [email protected]. mortality is alleged to have depopulated the “known world” and to This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/ have accelerated the transition to a “backward”“Dark Age” pe- doi:10.1073/pnas.1903797116/-/DCSupplemental. riod, devastating the Late Roman Empire and extinguishing an- First published December 2, 2019. 25546–25554 | PNAS | December 17, 2019 | vol. 116 | no. 51 www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1903797116 Downloaded by guest on September 30, 2021 population size and illuminate the possible extent of the plague’s that many authors wrote about them. Fig. 1 examines the 18 waves demographic toll. While methodological limitations do not allow the most comprehensive catalog describes (21). The results reveal us to establish the absolute size of late antique populations, the how scant the written evidence is for most of these recurrences, datasets we assess indicate there was no 6th century population even after we have included sections in which the JP plays a tan- collapse. By examining several higher-resolution (annual to de- gential role and texts written centuries after these events. Only cadal) datasets before, during, and after the onset of plague in the 2 short sentences, for example, discuss the supposed 17th wave Mediterranean region in 541 CE, we can begin to determine (circa 732 to 735): “In this year there was a plague [thanatikon, whether there were significant changes in late antique population literally a mortality] in Syria and many people died” (31) and “And levels. In addition, we employ lower-resolution measures to sup- in this year there occurred in Palestine and Egypt a severe pesti- port our argument that evidence for a demographically significant lence [wabaʾ, literally an epidemic]” (32). Moreover, attempts to JP is lacking. construct recurrences overlook the hundreds of contemporary texts in the 5 languages that do not discuss plague. As examples, 1 data- Textual (Historical) Evidence to Support Plague Severity Has base has collected the works of approximately 120 authors in Greek Been