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Black Death Predated 'Small World' Effect, Say Network Theorists
KentuckyFC writes "Epidemiologists know that modern diseases can spread almost simultaneously in different parts of the planet because an individual who becomes infected in Hong Kong, for example, can infect friends in New York the following day. This is known as the small world effect. It is the same property that allows any individual to link to another individual anywhere in the world in just a few steps. But in the 14th century, the Black Death spread in a very different way, moving slowly across Europe at a rate of about 2 kilometers a day. Now network theorists have simulated this spread and say it is only possible if the number of long distances travelers in those days was vanishingly small. In other words, people in medieval society were linked almost exclusively to others nearby and so did not form a small world network. That raises an interesting question. If society in 14th century Europe was not a small world but today's society is, when did the change occur? The researchers say the finger of blame points to the invention of railways and steamships which allowed large numbers of people, and the diseases they carried, to travel long distances for the first time."
Rats. Crusades. Trade.
They had Silk in freaking Budapesht, Kiev, Oslo, Bruges, Orleans, Stuttgart and Florence. How isolated do you think the world was?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The Bubonic plague was carried by the rats. It can only be transmitted human to human in it's final stages and the fleas can't survive long on human body. Two km a day seems about right for rats.
I would suspect the major factor back then on why the plague didn't spread so far, so quickly was that while they had long-distane trade links, the time period during which the plague would incubate and ultimately kill someone was far shorter than the time it took to travel great distances. I'm sure that if someone in a travel party began exhibiting symptoms of the plague, they were rather quickly left to die on their own in some remote location to avoid infecting the rest of the party.
From TFS:
Um, who exactly is this news to? Historians and sociologists have known this for decades.
So it's true that I could catch some disease if I go out then?
What if human beings were not, in some way, a vector?
Horses are expensive to maintain, and have a rough daily limit of about 30 miles. In comparison, a human walking at 3 mph can go the same distance in only 10 hours. The difference, of course, is that horses can carry more and get there faster, before taking more time to rest.
For the peasants who made up the majority of the population during the 14th century, a horse was a good tool for farmers or messengers, but regular travel would best be done on foot with a light pack and a steady pace.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I think the not-so-amazing revelation is that people in the 14th century were generally travelling very small distances on a daily basis. The world wasn't isolated in terms of accessibility, but in terms of time-to-destination. That's my understanding of the summary, at least.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
How fast do you think this silk moved across Europe?
\m/
Srry mates, it's friday...
-- 29A the number of the Beast
You have to evaluate the transit time required via any given mode of transportation, compared to the time it takes to incapacitate a person after initial infection.
That limits the distance a lone carrier could spread the disease. People going to the next village to trade, or (once the danger becomes apparent) to request help or warn them would be the likely rural vectors, and that sounds like the two km / day limit. People could obviously walk farther in a day, but didn't need to. The next village or settlement was the extent of their every-day wandering).
That assumes foot traffic as the default mode of transportation.
However when horses became affordable for everyday travelers, as well as wagon freight transport, and carriage travel became common between villages, you would expect that distance could be pushed out to 18 to 25 miles per day. Either on horseback or by carriage or wagon, it was typical to cover about that distance in a day.
This would be the first time non-human disease carriers (rats) would become a significant vector, as wagon cargo could deliver rats, dead or alive, over distances of 100 miles or more in 7 or 8 days.
So I don't believe you have to postulate the existence of rail travel to see much wider spread over the gestation period. All you need to is assume some goods might be transported (in bulk big enough to accidentally include rats) over several days of journey. Rats in cargo, even if dead, would typically arrive at their destination regardless of how long the trip took. and 7 or 800 miles would not be unreasonable in harvest times.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
good point.
And we have to recall that Europe was jsut a very small part in the backwaters of a huge world connected mostly by sea with the Arab traders on one side, Asia and China on the other (until China closed itself later) and of course, the Mongols.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
There are other ways that the plague could spread. Yes, someone infected with the plague would die before reaching their destination. However, ships also carried cargo, which could be contaminated. Standard procedure was to quarantine ships and their cargo but, understandably, there could be pressures to rush things because people didn't like their precious fabrics to be kept on an isolated island for forty days, especially since they could easily get damaged in the process.
This is how the Great Plague of Marseilles began: a ship laden with cargo belonging to important people was not quarantined according to procedure. Unfortunately, it had come from the Middle East where the plague was rampant and it starting spreading through the city.
Well, rather fast.
We had a network of roads, the Hanseatic societies and most importantly rivers and the sea.
It took a ship a few weeks to get from here in Amsterdam to anywhere in the Baltic, and the same counts for the Mediterranean. Recall that the Italians and Catalonian had huge fleets?
And BTW, 2km is crap, in these times you would have travelled much more just from one village to another. These 2km per day make no sense at all.
OK, it's maybe the mean or the average but it still makes no sense. OK, people in villages may have stayed close to home... but our smart "scientists" just forgot that in these days people had a favourite hobby that consisted in gather in huge numbers dressed in fancy metallic suites and go paying their neighbours a visit... they called in "armies" you know?
And there were fairs, and the aforementioned merchants, and comedians and pilgrims.... and this was just our dear old Europe, a little place in the backwaters of the medieval world filled with simple barbarians.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
The "Arab" traders were really a remarkable multi-ethnic amalgamation of Levantine and peninsular Arabs, Africans from the horn, Persians from the gulf, and Indians from the Arabian sea - Malabar Coast and Gujurat. There were also Genoans, Turks and Georgians from the Caucasus - with plenty of overlap by Chinese through the time of Kublai, under the Mongols.
This was the world of Sinbad, and the true inheritor of the great maritime civilizations in the Mediterranean - Tyre, Mycenae and Athens.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How fast do you think this silk moved across Europe?
I'm not sure but I've heard they already used bitcoins back then to pay for it.
Ezekiel 23:20
Very good point.
And sum to it that people had a very good reason to do that as many laborers mved from place to place for the harvests.
Here in Central Europe young men used to travel long distances during their time of apprenticeship in the different guilds, this tradition is still held in Germany (Wanderschaft). Guilds like the stonemasons travelled from Spain to Cenral Europe and you can find their guild emblems in Romanic and Gothic buildings across the whole continent. Some may even have been in Africa with the Arabs during the period of Al Andalus.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Fuck mate, but that's only newbs until they get a decent flying mount.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Tell that to Ghengis Khan.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Incubation period?
And note that the fact that the Black Plague was actually the bubonic pest is not yet confirmed, we can't thus be sure if there may have been people infected with the plague while being asymptomatic.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Rats. Crusades. Trade.
They had Silk in freaking Budapesht, Kiev, Oslo, Bruges, Orleans, Stuttgart and Florence. How isolated do you think the world was?
I think the point was, it's not the distance, it's the speed and frequency.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Even up until WW2, the horses were what limited the rate of advance for armies, including the german invasion of Belgium and France, since horses were what pulled the majority of the logistics train.
Also, in regions where roads were not common, or in VERY bad shape, you usually had no horse depots, meaning that humans were much faster, especially over broken terrain
Horses are expensive to maintain, and have a rough daily limit of about 30 miles. In comparison, a human walking at 3 mph can go the same distance in only 10 hours.
That's not comparable. The horse could do that forever (for example, see this US cavalry manual which stipulates cavalry can go 35 miles a day, six days a week indefinitely - page 152) while the person would not be able to maintain that sort of pace for more than a few hours to a day unless they were in really good shape.
In comparison, typical indefinite marching rates for an army were about 10 miles a day (both for roman legionaires and US soldiers).
One year for the silk to travel the silk road. The black death spread rapidly along it as well.
Passenger airline traffic has the potential to disperse a world wide plague more deadly than all past wars combined. It is another issue which is shrouded by deliberate blindness as the cure would be very disruptive.
IIRC the incubation period between exposure and first symptoms of bubonic plague is approximately six days, which would mean a determined walker could cover over 100 miles spreading his disease wherever he stopped to eat, converse, and sleep. Retarding that spread would be the fact that most travelers were not traveling any great distance. Serfs and peasants were tied to the land, seldom traveling further than the nearest market, but there were peddlers, pilgrims and couriers, as well as the upper classes and their servants, who were more mobile.
All things considered, two miles a day does not seem too unbelievable a pace if the disease was spread by human vectors. And yes, of course, railroads and steamships were the catalyst for the great nineteenth century human migrations and, naturally, their diseases.
Almost nobody had horses back then, compared to the 19th century. Working the land was done manually, or with the aid of oxen and such. Horses were more or less used as battle transportation and sometimes very important couriers. There was occasional other use for them, but horse ownership was usually reserved to the nobility and rich cities due to the cost of maintenance in the times that the black plague was hitting Europe.
Keep in mind that the black plague was spread by fleas that favoured rats, cats, dogs and such as hosts. They would choose humans as hosts, but were repelled by horses and their smell. As such, people that lived in horse staples and worked with horses, or rode them to the next town, most often were spared. If a lone person travelling on horse back would come from an infested city and was not bitten by an infested flea by the time he left that city, he wouldn't be carrying any infested fleas or the bacteria by the time he arrived in the next town. The spread of the virus might have actually occurred without any human interaction whatsoever in a lot of cases where fleas just infected rodents living in the wild, or actually by people that travelled by foot and brought their dogs and such along.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I think what we tend to forget is how much of a chore that travel was to people that were walking or traveling by wagon. My paternal grandmother grew up in a what was one of the last frontier areas in the central part of the United States, in the late 1890's the 50 mile wide strip of land in western Louisiana that was disputed territory with Spain prior to the Texas Independence in the 1830's , and remained virtually uninhabited until timber rush of the 1880's. The nearest city of any size was the river / ocean port city of Lake Charles 50 miles away by road or 75 miles indirectly by rail 10 miles away (post 1905). During this time the town she lived in was a booming timber mill town with a couple of thousand people, her father owned one of the two general stores in the town, and would travel to Lake Charles once every 4-6 weeks for supplies., this was usually done by wagon, taking 2 or 3 wagons which his children would help drive. This was a 2 day trip, the first day was spent traveling with the empty wagons to a point where there was a ferry that crossed into Lake Charles on the west bank of the Calcasieu river near the present day town of Moss Bluff, where they would camp out over night in the wagons. Early the following morning her father would take the wagons into to Lake Charles (which had a population of 7,000- 12,000 people at this time) to buy goods, leaving the kids at camp to fix food for the day's travel, and prepare the wagons., they would then set off traveling home with their loaded wagons by mid morning, arriving back home late in the evening. Needless to say such long distance travels were not common for many of the children of the community, and likely few of the adults as well, and this was around the turn of the 20's century, well into the age of steam engines, and around the birth of the automobile..
It's what I keep telling you wife too. I'm only in town every other Tuesday.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
My uncle knows a 40-some year-old woman who has never been off the island of Manhattan, and can't imagine any reason for doing so. I'm utterly unable to understand such a viewpoint.
It wasn't long ago when most people, even those who were lucky enough to own a horse, never strayed more than 20 miles (generally a day's journey) from home. In many cultures travelers were welcomed with open arms, as they were the only source of news of the outside (aside from invading armies).
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Horses are expensive to maintain, and have a rough daily limit of about 30 miles. In comparison, a human walking at 3 mph can go the same distance in only 10 hours.
That's not comparable. The horse could do that forever (for example, see this US cavalry manual which stipulates cavalry can go 35 miles a day, six days a week indefinitely - page 152) while the person would not be able to maintain that sort of pace for more than a few hours to a day unless they were in really good shape.
In comparison, typical indefinite marching rates for an army were about 10 miles a day (both for roman legionaires and US soldiers).
It's very comparable. A human can keep up a 3mph walk forever as well. A 3mph pace is not hard for a human at all and without
a pack 30 miles a day would not be an issue for a human. 35 miles per day, six days a week indefinitely would not be a problem for
the average person either. I don't think a march with camp setup, etc... is comparable to what the original poster was talking about.
I think you underestimate what a human is capable of. When I was in college we went on a hike to the bottom of the grand canyon
for a week. None of us were in great shape, did any training, or probably near as fit as a peasant who worked all day in the field
every day yet we averaged about 20-25 miles a day for a week with heavy packs on rough terrain and making camp each night.
We obviously could have done alot more with a light pack. And again, we were not in shape, didn't train, and most had never even
been backpacking before. For endurance running a human is every bit as good as a single horse. The pony express used multiple
horses because horses are faster over short distances but over multiple days a human is actually faster. A good runner can do alot
more than 35 miles per day. This guy averaged over 50 miles a day for 40 days:
http://www.outsideonline.com/blog/outdoor-adventure/the-human-express-interview-with-karl-meltzer.html
Here is one of many articles that states that humans can outrun every animal on the planet:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us
Oh, and reading over that article about Karl Meltzer, it says on the 40th day he ran over 100 miles.
I'm not sure a horse is even capable of 100 miles in a single day where here is a person who
did this after running over 2000 miles in the previous 39 days.
It spread an average of 2km day, people can and do walk faster and further than that on a daily basis, it wasn't just the speed difference between human legs and Toyota wheels, it was simply that most people did not travel, period. Travelling anywhere your face was unknown was exceedingly dangerous and the king's men who patrolled the roads and woods normally frowned upon peasants wandering around the countryside by themselves, if you were in the woods for no good reason then you were a poacher, if you were out on the road for no good reason you were either a highwayman or an unwelcome Gypsy (Queen Elizabeth's the 1st name for Egyptians). Most people were farmers or servants of one kind or another, they worked their arse off for the landlord for the privilege of living on the lord's land and using the lord's market place/village. In short systematic economic slavery across all of Europe was the norm before the industrial revolution, Victorian era factories full of kids may look unbelievably inhumane to modern eyes but they were a godsend to the majority of peasants who were living and working in even harsher conditions.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Before the pathological evil of what we know as the industrial war machine, with broadcast technologies and deployment tactics that could harness fear and loathing to politics everywhere at once--- and the tireless drudges who worship them came to the fore---
We were becoming increasingly cyclical, distracted by moment, swaying in tighter rhythms while not dancing -- a bad sign. Hypnotized by the leafspring, the mainspring, the ratchet, the pendulum and most obnoxious of all, an hour-bell that means something besides nothing.
Between brutal wars -- merely pathological, in a cute sort of way. The animals kept us sane.
Despite ages of civilized existence -- it has scarcely been one hundred years since our clocks and calendars, biological and practical, were last paced by animals. And what a time it has been.
Rome built the roads; but it was always horses and oxen that set the pace. Oxen and people, measured seasons of growing in the fields. Even on the ocean do we find animal companions, for in the days when sails took us to places unknown, animals were aboard to ensure survival. But the wind itself is like an ox, with moods that paced the journey.
History has always moved in waves legions of soldiers traveling light and fast as wind, settlers burdened with goods at a snail's or oxen-pace. On a smart strong horse riders could doze and daydream, the beast's eyes as fixed on the horizon as the rider. In the far north dogs, rivers and caribou set the pace; in Summer mosquitoes kept everyone on the run.
Was a time we'd foretell the seasons by the birds as they got ready to travel, there were places for them to roost. Migrating birds and the moon and the stars to guide them were featured in theaters of sky and morning and evening and darkest night.
People cast tiny flickering shadows on land that went out with sleep -- not the lidless throbbing glimmer of busy continents today.
And news flowed like the tides -- news from over the ocean, of country and world gathering in eddies of pulp presented, like sermons, in their own time and place of reading. Local news and affairs churned with comfortable babbling regularity: ripples of gossip, stories heard in tavern and meeting-house and church. Rumor from afar came through with strangers and gathered rapt attention for telling and re-telling. Church it was that harnessed the calendar at first -- but it took a whole week for the tides of morality to flow round again -- plenty of time left for fun.
Where days full of task might stretch a bit here and there played themselves out, church bells gave us the first hint of regimentation to time. A manageable affair, for even old rural school-house days could hold more leisure within the hours, and there was more mixing between the ages during the process of learning. Apprenticeships. Though even in the age-segregated electric-bell'd warrens of today a good teacher can still open vistas; but like all modern animals even teachers are challenged by pace and environment. They're only human.
Even our busiest cities were townish -- wide avenues for horses, slow moving newspapers and the ever-present lure to market-place, wharf and concert hall tugged at us, kept us moving between meetings.
Those on long journeys tended to be out in the open. They set sights on destination more so than the calendar; getting there was the thing even if the journey was not. And long many-people journeys were actually moving cities -- where one or two people drift into dream-time, whole families and groups illuminated the trail with their own culture and hobby. We sang along the rivers, played music in time with horses' hooves. Children sought adventure on the fringes of camp.
Weather was the ocean we lived in, not the comforting or annoying visitor it is today. If you spot people-dots in a model of society you'll find us traveling more distance but moving around less than ever before. Everything is piped in, even things that shouldn't have been.
Farms have be
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Right. The authors have overlooked the fact, as shown by their own map, that, in 1347, the plague moved into Europe along a broad front: the Mediterranean coastline. I imagine that it spread along that front by ship, a good deal faster than the inland spread that the authors base their thesis on.
Furthermore, the authors summarily dismiss the effect of the disease on its spread. It was very debilitating, and a traveller on land who fell sick would be unlikely to continue his journey. The authors exaggerate the distance a sick traveller would be likey to spread the disease.
Add to this the failure of the authors to recognize that almost all land travel would be by foot (with what animals were being used for transport mostly being used to carry the baggage of foot travellers) and you have three strikes against their argument. I don't doubt that the world was less connected than than it is now, but the authors overstate their case. By overestimating the rate at which land travel would, in practice, spread the diseease, they have underestimated the amount of travel.
Have you got any good readings you can recommend on the subject =)?
Registration and Purchase required? PDFs from the New Cambridge History of Islam. There's an amazing maritime section here:
http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/histories/ebook.jsf?bid=CBO9781139056137
Blow your mind, with the journal of the travels of 14th Century adventurer, Ibn Batutta. He makes Marco Polo look like a homebody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta
1929 abridged translation of Ibn Batutta's journals:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zKqn_CWTxYEC
More books? Warwick Ball is an accessible archaeologist and historian, who effectively destroys the case for "Clash of Civilizations", and the entire dubious taxonomy of "east and west".
http://www.amazon.com/Rome-East-Transformation-Warwick-Ball/dp/0415243572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382201303&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Out-Arabia-Phoenicians-Discovery-Europe/dp/1566568013/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382201303&sr=1-5
http://www.amazon.com/Towards-One-World-Ancient-Persia/dp/1566568226/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382201303&sr=1-3
Nice, "pro-Nabatean" writeup on the late-antique origin of Arab maritime trade, after the breakup of Alexandrian east. You will have to go farther back, to the Phoenicians of Tyre and Carthage, 'tho! This author begins with Nabatean emergence. There are many links on this site... Quite fascinating.
http://nabataea.net/who1.html
Oman and maritime history. Nice to overlay this with the Nabateans. These things met and mingled - especially out in the Indian ocean, away from home:
http://www.maritime.om/Oman-Maritime-History
The sections on Ancient Indian and Chinese maritime development is slim, but worthwhile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_maritime_history#Indian_subcontinent
An Indo-centric, but factual and entertaining page:
http://www.aseanindia.com/navy/maritime-history
Summary of "silk-routes":
http://www.silkroutes.net/SilkSpiceIncenseRoutes.htm
Genoa in the Crimea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genoese_colonies
Technology of early Islamic ship-building - mostly focused on Mediterranean, not Indo-Persian
http://www.academia.edu/1596791/Early_Islamic_Maritime_Technology
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
But it's not simply speed, that's my point. You don't get the quarantine issue with land-based travel, which was slower than sea-based travel. It's the boat as a closed environment that makes most of the difference. You could probably get from Alicante in Spain to the toe of Italy quicker by boat than by bus, and a plague bus would be unwittingly spreading its disease at various motorway service stations on the way, whereas the plague boat would be isolated, and the symptoms would hopefully start to show before reaching the destination, thus giving the chance for total quarantine.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'