Stop blaming rats for the plague
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. What if the most ordinary things in your life aren't ordinary at all? A toothbrush, the pockets in your jeans, even a gravestone. Someone designed them, shaped them, argued over them and got it so right you've stopped noticing. The everyday is full of hidden ingenuity and on By Design with me, Anthony Burke, we pull it all into the light. Search for By Design on the ABC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the mid-1300s. For weeks now, the people in your town have just been disappearing. One day, it's a fever. The next, they're writhing in pain, their bodies covered in these huge, swollen lumps. Carts roll through the streets, stacked with the dead.
The smell, it hits you before you can even see them. And all you can think is, how is this happening?
And am I next? The Black Death, and that will eventually kill 25% of the world's population. That's an almost unthinkable number.
The Black Death, the plague, pestilence, whatever you call it, this was the worst health disaster the world had ever seen. But what and who caused it? Everybody blames rats. The rats did nothing wrong. Right? Not rats, not cats, not just the fact that the Middle Ages weren't great for hygiene, no. Behind one of the most deadly chapters in human history is something far larger, more complex, and more lavish.
It's riches beyond our wildest imagination.
My name is Mark Finnell, and you are about to have the Black Death, completely myth-busted, an epic of war, of wealth, unintended consequences, and no one saw it coming.
What is it that people get wrong about medieval times? Because I feel like it gets a bad rap. It gets a really bad rap. It's one of the things that is most frustrating. People have this tendency to look at the medieval period as though it is intensely and uniquely stupid. As though it's just a group of people who are rolling around in mud being idiots.
This is medieval historian Dr. Eleanor Janager. And if there's one thing she loves, it's ripping up everything you think you know about the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages does what it says on the tin, right? You've got the ancient world, you've got the modern world, and they're the bridge in between. So they kind of act like ancient people. They kind of act like modern people. And I like how they are like us in a lot of respects, but also just wilding out.
So we're kind of going from like the end of the Western Roman civilization up to like the Renaissance, right?
What common myths about the Black Death are debunked?
Mm-hmm.
I think people forget, like, that's a millennia of history. Yeah, exactly. And it also means a lot of different things. I think one of the reasons why people don't have the opportunity to learn about it so these myths prevail is because it's intensely complicated. Like, what is happening in 6th century Iberian Peninsula is very, very different to what is happening in 14th century, you know, what are the German lands, right? And that's very different to what is happening in Baghdad, which is very, very different to what is, you know, happening in China, right? You have all these kind of local cultures going on. So it's difficult to teach in school.
And there is one other thing that Eleanor loves calling out. It's this idea that the medieval world was just a bit brown and gray and dreary with mud everywhere. Because in reality, according to Eleanor, it was actually a period bursting with color.
Every single medieval building used to be like painted, painted, painted both inside and out. So you'd go in and it would be covered in murals. You know, it's got to be seven different colors. They've got flowers climbing up the walls. But plaster falls off of stone walls, right? So if you go into a castle or you go into a church now, you're just going to see the bare stone. And that's because it hasn't been kept up. Within churches, you see the same thing because when Protestantism comes in, there's a backlash against decoration, so they stop doing it. And so if you go into a medieval building now, you're going to go into like a big cold stone hall.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:11
2
What common myths about the Black Death are debunked?
3:11–6:35
3
How did the interconnectedness of the medieval world contribute to the spread of the plague?
6:35–10:00
4
What role did trade routes play in the transmission of the Black Death?
10:00–12:48
5
Where did the Black Death actually begin?
12:48–16:06
6
What misconceptions exist about medieval hygiene and bathing practices?
16:06–19:40
7
How did the Golden Horde influence the spread of the plague?
19:40–23:16
8
Why is it incorrect to blame rats for the Black Death?
23:16–25:46