The source
of this new twist is Kyle Harper, a classics professor at the University of
Oklahoma. In 2017, he [offered] “an ambitious synthesis on the causes of the
empire’s decline.” He argued that “the fate of Rome was played out by emperors
and barbarians, senators and generals, soldiers, and slaves. But it was equally
decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes, and solar cycles.”
As proof,
the article cites the Antonine plague (165-180 A.D.), the Cyprian plague (circa
249-269 A.D.), and droughts in the Mediterranean (368-369 A.D.) caused by
climate shifts.
Harper drew
conclusions from “data from climatology and epidemiology.” The article does not
explain how and where this data came from. The Roman Climate Optimum is “believed
to have lasted from circa 550 B.C. to 150 A.D.” What this belief is based on is
not explained.
The article
cited firsthand accounts of agronomist Columella who “indicated that in the
first century A.D. rainfall in central and southern Italy was more frequent in
summer than it is today.” And how do we know that?
The vast Western
Roman Empire depended on its supply of grain and food on the many provinces
that they had conquered. These areas produced the grains needed to support the
army and the local population.
The Nat Geo
article suggested that a tiny change in the Earth’s tilt reduced solar energy
penetrating the atmosphere from the mid-third century A.D. which impacted the
climate, making things cooler and less productive agriculturally.
What is the scientific
evidence? Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (in north Africa) wrote as an eyewitness
account that the world has grown old and in wintertime showers were not so
abundant to nourish the seeds and the sun is not so hot to “cherish the
harvest.” And the grain fields are not so “joyous,” and the autumn harvest are
not so “fruitful in their leafy products.”
So based on
this scant written evidence of a Bishop, we are now told to believe that the Western
Roman Empire fell because of plagues and climate change. Never mind that the
climate has changed for millennia across human history. And plagues and disease
have affected, diminished, and killed some empires. But the Western Roman
Empire did not fall because of climate change or bacteria.
Yes, cities
were densely populated, and fires, and disease (tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria),
and plagues have killed many across centuries in such closed quarters. Empires,
including the Roman Empire, were affected by such occurrences.
Bishop St.
Cyprian of Carthage wrote in a sermon De Mortalitate (On Mortality)
about the plague in the middle of the third century which originated in Ethiopia,
Egypt, Levant, Asia Minor, Greece, and even Italy (249-269 A.D.). The Western
Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D., two centuries later for entirely different
reasons.
Paulus
Orosius, a fifth century Christian historian, who was not present at the
Cyprian plague, wrote about it in terms that indicated nothing but devastation
for Italy. How credible is this historian two centuries later, a man who was not
there?
The Nat Geo article
talks about “climate refugees,” a term coined by the global warming crowd, in
the form of nomadic herders from the “Eurasian steppe, from the Hungarian
plains to Mongolia.” These nomads allegedly forced other “nomadic peoples from
the north toward the land of the Roman Empire.”
The Nat Geo
article states, “it now seems certain [how certain is that?] that epidemics and
droughts were a notable factor in the process that led to the definitive fall
of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D.”
Sanchez,
writing for Nat Geo, ends his article very carefully with, “Our understanding
of precise climatic conditions from that time remains incomplete, especially across
a region as vast as the Roman Empire.” He warns against ‘deterministic
conclusions’ because “history cannot be explained simply by a variation in
temperature or rainfall or by the outbreak of plagues, however deadly they may
be.”
Yet the
title of his Nat Geo article clearly states, “Plagues and climate change, the
fall of the Roman Empire, environmental disasters and devastating epidemics triggered
the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century.”
Edward
Gibbon wrote in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
“The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate
greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the
causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as
soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the
stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”
‘Climate change’ or plagues did not cause the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But many other variables were significant such as the sack of the Eternal City (Rome) in 410 A.D. which dealt a psychological blow to the Empire and the entire world; the Gothic invasions; the inability to control the vast and far reaching borders of the empire; the population reduction due to infertility from potential poisoning by lead pipes which carried water to the Western empire’s cities and provinces; drinking from lead cups and using lead as sweetener and cosmetics with lead would have certainly caused severe arthritic transformations in the population at a young age; the inability to defend its territories and borders with enough soldiers to keep the invading hordes out.
There is no
direct data relating to temperature earlier than a couple of hundred years ago.
Scientists use “proxies” such as tree rings and layers of ice deposited on
glaciers and polar caps. But during the Roman Empire there were no tree-ring
studies and glaciers in the Alps are far north. The
Roman Empire's Worst Plagues Were Linked to Climate Change | Scientific
American
John Haldon
et al wrote that “Harper’s assertions that Rome fell as a result of
environmental stress, in particular through a combination of pandemic disease
and climate change is a conclusion cast under serious doubts.”
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