If your research involves identifying extreme events in history, and how they affected (and will affect again) society, then you're bound to find some fairly terrifying stuff. Years when the sky was obscured by ash from volcanic eruptions, years when winter lasted 12 months, and years when pandemics were so severe that the land seemed emptied to the eyes of the few who survived. These events leave an indelible mark in the historical, archaeological and natural records. As we bridge the divide between these types of historical sources, across disciplines and across time, we began to focus on these extreme events which had an extraordinary impact on human society and the environment. In a way, our work contributes to a list of the worst years in history which have been the subject of some our publications and much attention in recent press. Understanding the past means understanding the present, so that when a climate crisis or a pandemic presents itself to us in our lives, we will know how others before us overcame such challenges. Here lies another crucial contribution of history: the comforting reassurance that we've overcome these crises in the past, and we will do so again in the present and the future.
Recent webinar on "What History Teaches Us About Pandemics,"
by Prof. Michael McCormick, Goelet Professor of Medieval History and
Chair of the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard.
536 C.E.
Coverage by Science of our 2019 article, where Harvard SoHP and the
Climate Change Institute identified the source of the calamitous 536 C.E.
volcanic eruption in Iceland. The coverage, by Ann Gibbons, received the
Pearlman Award for science writing by the American Geophysical Union.
1348 C.E.
Data published in our 2017 and 2018 articles showing the impact of the Black Death plague pandemic
(1348-53 and later waves) on air pollution, particularly lead (Pb). Much like what happened during
the COVID-19 pandemic, the pollution dropped during the Black Death to the lowest levels ever recorded in Europe.
Some of the press covering our 2017 and 2018 studies on how the greatest pandemic ever to ravage Europe and Asia caused a
drop in lead air pollution levels, much the same way in which COVID-19 has recently reduced nitrate and carbon dioxide pollution in the
atmosphere.
