If the twenty-first century seems an unlikely stage for the return of a 14th-century killer, the authors of Return of the Black Death argue that the plague, which vanquished half of Europe, has only lain dormant, waiting to emerge again—perhaps, in another form. At the heart of their chilling scenario is their contention that the plague was spread by direct human contact (not from rat fleas) and was, in fact, a virus perhaps similar to AIDS and Ebola. Noting the periodic occurrence of plagues...
This exciting and important book covers the impact on demography of the nutrition of populations, offering the view that the change from the hunter-gatherer to an agricultural life-style had a major impact on human demography, which still has repercussions today. Demography and Nutrition takes an interdisciplinary approach, involving time-series analyses, mathematical modelling, aggregative analysis and family reconstitution as well as analysis of data series from Third World countries in the...
