Abstract
In historical times, plague epidemics intermittently ravaged Europe for more than 1,400 years, and still represent a threat in many countries all over the world. A debate is ongoing about the past plague, if it killed randomly in a population or discriminated among persons on the basis of their biological features. To address questions of plague lethality, we reviewed a large number of anthropological studies published in the last twenty years on victims of the past pestilences in Europe. In particular, we focused on data concerning demography (age at death and sex determination), and health status (skeletal biomarkers). We applied to these data a model system based on Multiple Linear Regression, which aimed to discern among possible predictors of sex-selective plague lethality in entire populations, in different periods and regions. Based on available data, we lack evidence for general trends of association between biological features. Differences in sex ratio are more likely due to the original population compositions or to distinct cultural behaviours of the two genders. We concluded that generalizations on biological evidence are not feasible for ancient plagues if we exclude that the infection possibly killed primarily persons between 5–10 and 20–35 years of age.
Highlights
Plague is an infectious disease that has repeatedly caused small and large epidemics throughout history
Bioarchaeologists have aimed to address the question if plague was a “universal killer” or if it was selective in its mortality effects, with regard to the pre-existing health status of the victims determined on skeletal indicators, to their sex or age
An additional study, carried out on mortmain records in Hainaut, Belgium, in the period 1349–145032 has revealed that the Black Death, as well as other plague epidemics up to 1450, often had a sex-selective effect and killed more women than in “non-plague years”
Summary
Plague is an infectious disease that has repeatedly caused small and large epidemics throughout history. Some scholars working on bioarchaeological data from London have challenged the view of the Black Death killing indiscriminately and have identified elements of selectivity for age and pre-existing health status of the victims[27,28,29,30]. Another anthropological study[31] has demonstrated that the Black Death killed in England more male than female individuals among those who showed more indicators of skeletal frailty due to pre-existing physiological stress. The authors propose that a biological reason might explain their outcomes more than a cultural one, which could have enhanced the risk of exposure to plague for women
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