How Psychology Can Explain the Deadly Medieval Dancing Plagues > .
The videos claims: "From the 1200s through the 1600s [1020-1518], parts of Europe were afflicted with deadly, mysterious outbreaks of seemingly contagious, unstoppable dancing. While it's still unclear exactly why these "dancing plagues" happened, [ergot poisoning or] modern psychology [dissociative trance disorder, social contagion; religious ritual, sleep deprivation] may be able to provide someanswers possible explanations."
Most likely? Ergot poisoning.
The videos claims: "From the 1200s through the 1600s [1020-1518], parts of Europe were afflicted with deadly, mysterious outbreaks of seemingly contagious, unstoppable dancing. While it's still unclear exactly why these "dancing plagues" happened, [ergot poisoning or] modern psychology [dissociative trance disorder, social contagion; religious ritual, sleep deprivation] may be able to provide some
Most likely? Ergot poisoning.
Epidemics and climatic cooling caused a large decrease in the European population in the 6th century. Compared to the Roman period, agriculture in the Middle Ages in western Europe became more focused on self-sufficiency. The Feudal period began about 1000. The agricultural population under feudalism in northern Europe was typically organized into manors consisting of several hundred or more acres of land presided over by a Lord of the Manor, with a Roman Catholic church and priest. Most of the people living on the manor were peasant farmers or serfs who grew crops for themselves and either labored for the lord and church or paid rent for their land. Barley and wheat were the most important crops in most European regions; oats and rye were also grown, along with a variety of vegetables and fruits. Oxen and horses were used as draft animals. Sheep were raised for wool and pigs were raised for meat.
Wild rye is indigenous to Anatolia and was already domesticated there by the early Neolithic at the beginning of agriculture. Secale migrated to Central Europe as a weed among other cereals, and single grains of weed rye have been recorded there since the early Neolithic. The number of finds increased during the Bronze Age and Iron Age, and the status of rye changed from weed to crop plant, probably in the course of the early Iron Age. This acculturation of Secale cereale in central and eastern Europe was obviously independent of the earlier one in Anatolia. The first stages towards deliberate cultivation happened unintentionally through harvesting close to the ground, so that the rye was permanently represented in the seed corn. From this point rye was able to take advantage of its competitive strength on poor soils and in areas with unfavourable climate. The start of rye as a crop in its own right during the pre-Roman Iron Age and Roman period presumably took place independently in different areas. The expansion of intensive rye cultivation occurred in the Middle Ages. However, new finds from north-west Germany, which are presented here, show that in this area rye has been cultivated as a main crop on poor soils since the Roman period. In two maps all rye finds up to 1000 A.D. are shown, which after critical consideration can be regarded as cultivated rye.
Crop failures due to bad weather were frequent throughout the Middle Ages and famine was often the result. Despite the hardships, there is anthropometric evidence that medieval European men were taller (and therefore presumably better fed) than the men of the preceding Roman Empire and the subsequent early modern era.
The medieval system of agriculture began to break down in the 14th century with the development of more intensive agricultural methods in the Low Countries and after the population losses of the Black Death in 1347–1351 made more land available to a diminished number of farmers. Medieval farming practices, however, continued with little change in the Slavic regions and some other areas until the mid-19th century.
