535AD Catastrophe Theory

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by molly bloom

But Byzantium did also acquire 'new' grain imports when Carthage/Tunisia was retaken from the Vandals and Justinian had to build a new granary on the island of Tenedos to accommodate the necessary grain for Byzantium's growing population. Grain which came from Egypt too... ...where Procopius says the plague originated.

but as we've already discussed, extenstive grain imports from Egypt were not new, and Carthage-Tunisia is not on the suggested path for this pathogen.

Had there been an 'original' outbreak of plague in Central Asia it's highly unlikely that the migration of the Turkish tribes would have posed any problems for either the Hindu kingdoms, the Chinese, the Byzantines or the Sassanids. They would have been too few in number.

We should also have expected to see plague erupt in China or northern Persia given the closer links to Central Asia.

Yes, but I didnt suggest a Central Asia origin. I suggested an origin within the Byzantine empire.

Also the outbreak would not have occurred first in Egypt/Africa...

IIUC the first record of the outbreak was in Egypt. You neednt keep saying Egypt/Africa. We all know Egypt is on the continent of Africa. A first recorded outbreak in Egypt does not necessarily imply an origin in Africa south of Egypt. It could have originated IN Egypt. Or it could have originated elsewhere in the Byz empire, and first become noticeable in Egypt.

[molly bloom]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by lord of the mark

Originally posted by molly bloom

but as we've already discussed, extenstive grain imports from Egypt were not new, and Carthage-Tunisia is not on the suggested path for this pathogen.

The imports of grain from Egypt don't have to be a new source to bring flea-laden rats from Africa. That the imports of grain for a growing population in Byzantium increased is certainly true.

and Carthage-Tunisia is not on the suggested path for this pathogen.

I'm not suggesting it was. Here's what you said in an earlier post:

Long distance trade in that era was generally for luxuries, grain was traded over relatively short distances, if at all.

We know that grain was acquired for Byzantium in Justinian's reign from newly recaptured territories in southern Spain, North Africa and Sicily.

We know that there was an increased demand for grain to feed the growing populace, so great it required the construction of a new granary to supply the public dole.

We know that grain was grown in Egypt down the Nile, not just in the delta.

We also now that the mercantile class in Byzantium was growing richer and that Justinian inaugurated a period of church-building, leading to sites like Ravenna becoming models for Western art and churches.

Byzantine imports from Egypt were not limited to the necessary grain, but also included ivory from East Africa and Indian goods shipped through East Africa and then up the Red Sea, as well as trade goods inland from the new Nubian states up the Nile.

Yes, but I didnt suggest a Central Asia origin. I suggested an origin within the Byzantine empire.

From where ? Neither of the contemporary sources gives an indication that the infection originated anywhere other than in Africa.

Also Procopius says:

This disease always took its start from the coast, and then went up to the interior.”

Procopius: 'History of the Wars', II, xxii, 8

We all know Egypt is on the continent of Africa.

Unfortunately there has been a tendency to talk of Egypt as if it were somehow bizarrely detached from Africa.

You are guilty of this yourself:

Most plagues have been spawned where animals were domesticated, in Europe and Asia.

You didn't give any evidence for this remarkable statement, and also failed to notice that:

...man in Africa learned how to domesticate cattle, and soon, afterwards, how to grow food.

This first occurred in the valley of the Nile and the green Sahara. After about 3000 B.C. good breeds of cattle, acclimatised to African conditions, were gradually taken southwards by a variety of stock-raising peoples.

Cattle became numerous in the Sudanese grasslands, south of the Sahara, and in the eastern highlands.

The farming of crops moved gradually southward not long afterwards. Mostly these crops were African rice or millet. They began to be raised in the western Sudan perhaps as early as 2000 B.C. and at about the same time, though still in small quantities, in parts of East Africa.

from 'Africans Tame Their Land' in 'Discovering Africa's Past' , by Basil Davidson

A first recorded outbreak in Egypt does not necessarily imply an origin in Africa south of Egypt.

No it doesn't. However, the other source, Evagrius, gives Ethiopia as the point of origin:

“ ...it rose from Aethiopia, as is now reported, and made a circuit of the whole world in succession, leaving, as I suppose, no part of the human race unvisited by the disease. Some cities were so severely afflicted as to be altogether depopulated, though in other places the visitation was less violent. It neither commenced according to any fixed period, nor was the time of its cessation uniform; but it seized upon some places at the commencement of winter, others in the course of the spring, others during the summer, and in some cases, when the autumn was advanced…at the commencement of this calamity I was seized with what are termed buboes, while still a school-boy...”

The trade routes (long-established) were Adulis (the port of Axum) to Berenice (or other Byzantine ports on the Red Sea coast) to the Nile or further up the Red Sea coast ending in the Nile Delta ports such as Pelusium for shipping to Antioch, Sicily, Carthage and Byzantium.