
The Black Death may have transformed medieval societies in sub-Saharan Africa - Thevet
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/black-death-may-have-transformed-medieval-societies-sub-saharan-africa
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lqet
> Whatever calamity struck medieval sub-Saharan Africa, its impact was
> lasting. Akrokrowa was abandoned by about 1365, and Kirikongo was never the
> same. The settlement stayed small, the ceramics got much simpler, and the
> culture changed to more closely resemble that of the nearby Mali Empire. "It
> does seem to be a break," Dueppen says.

I like to bring up black death in discussions when people complain that our
current time is "difficult". In southern Europe in the middle of the 14th
century, it is likely that around 80% of the population died over a few years.
In Milan, town officials closed buildings with bricks as soon as they learned
that anyone in that house was infected (with the people still inside, of
course). Also, the social impact of this disease is often forgotten: I read
somewhere that any interpersonal relationship between 2 or more people was
effectively destroyed, because the other may already have been infected.
Parents refused to take care of their own children, and people saw no reason
to do long-term planning anymore (including farming). An epidemic like that
basically decomposes the fabric of society, and therefore culture, very
quickly, in a way only few other catastrophes are able to, and it may take
centuries to recover from that. Or the society will never recover at all:

> Historians have found previously unknown mentions of epidemics in Ethiopian
> texts from the 13th to the 15th centuries, including one that killed "such a
> large number of people that no one was left to bury the dead."

~~~
iguy
The strange thing is that Europe recovered quite fast. The survivors (or more,
their children) ended up significantly better-off, for a century or so,
basically because there was more land per person, so you could just farm the
better parts.

Whether something like that happened in (say) Ethiopia too, will I guess be
even harder to figure out than whether they had the plague at all.

~~~
lqet
> The survivors (or more, their children) ended up significantly better-off,
> for a century or so, basically because there was more land per person.

Indeed, this is something I always found extremely fascinating. The plague
destroyed the very rigid social and economic structures of medieval Europe.
Simply put, they had to take _anyone_ as a goldsmith's apprentice, even some
poor farmer's kid, because everyone else was dead. I am quite sure it is no
coincidence that the Renaissance appeared 1-2 generations after the black
death, and always held the secret opinion that European culture was basically
born in the fire that was the black death epidemic.

> The strange thing is that Europe recovered quite fast.

Easy answer: the plague was much, much, much more devastating in Ethiopia than
in Europe, leaving no one behind to recover from anything, or to tell the
harrowing story.

~~~
cimmanom
> I am quite sure it is no coincidence that the Renaissance appeared 1-2
> generations after the black death, and always held the secret opinion that
> European culture was basically born in the fire that was the black death
> epidemic.

I've heard that hypothesis from both popular and scholarly sources before.
Pretty sure it's a broadly held theory.

~~~
chewz
> I am quite sure it is no coincidence that the Renaissance appeared 1-2
> generations after the black death,

The opposite - Black Death had delayed the Renaissance for circa 2-3
generations. It was already happening and then the plague came and the
Renaisance have played out later in different times and with different people
and ideas.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_renaissances](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_renaissances)

------
wsgeorge
> in sub-Saharan Africa while excavating the site of Akrokrowa in Ghana.

Article never says if this is modern Ghana or the Ghana Empire. Elsewhere it
uses "Nigeria", and then goes back to talking about Akrokrowa being near the
Mali Empire.

I wish it will be a bit more specific. There seems to be a dearth of
historical/archeological information about the site that is modern day Ghana
(save legendary accounts from various tribes) before the Portuguese arrived at
Elmina.

------
Chikodi
Plausible explanations, but the evidence is flimsy at best

