The Birth of the Black Death: Biology, Ecology and Climate in the Tian Shan in the Early Fourteenth Century

Giovedì 20 aprile alle 10, nell'Aula 6 del Polo Guidotti, Philip Slavin terrà la lezione "The Birth of the Black Death: Biology, Ecology and Climate in the Tian Shan in the Early Fourteenth Century".

Philip Slavin è Associate Professor of Medieval and Environmental History, Division of History and Politics, University of Stirling.

The lecture will consider the environmental context of the early fourteenth-century Tian Shan region, in which the Second Plague Pandemic in general and the Black Death in particular commenced, suggesting that this major evolutionary event may have started in the context of profound eco-biological and climatic shifts, triggering bacterial activity (i.e., Yersinia pestis infection, transmission, and dissemination capacity) and initiating what became the single harshest human killer in known history.