“…Thank you so much for passing on this article to me. I am constantly amazed at how our knowledge of the past is in such a state of flux; history, as I constantly remind my students, is truly a never-ending argument.

I do wonder, however, at the claim at the start of the article which asserts that the Black Death killed approximately 100 million people. At the height of the High Middle Ages, the population of Europe was only around 75-100 million, and it had certainly fallen by the time of the Black Death’s first onslaught in 1349 due to wasting famine in the early decades of the 14th century. I generally stick to the consensus historical view that approximately 20 million died in the first 3-year outbreak. Perhaps the writers meant that upwards of 100 million people have died over the centuries due to the plague?”

So I am wondering about the 100 million death figure (or to be fair, what you refer to as up to 100 million); did it refer to the Black Plague specifically, or a larger cumulative figure?

By the way, I have used a variety of your posts as a resource in classes over the years, and have shared them with colleagues in Biology. I thought you might find it gratifying that psychologists, biologists, and now historians in one location are engaged in conversations connected to your work.