Born Then558–750
Life during the Recurrences of the first plague pandemic
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
After 541 the plague did not go away. It flared up again and again across the Mediterranean and the Near East until about 750, including the Plague of Amwas in Syria in 638–639. Each wave hit people who had grown up since the last one, keeping populations low.
Deaths: unknown; outbreaks returned roughly every 10 to 20 years for two centuries.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.
Around the same time
- Justinian's reconquest wars 533–554
- Plague of Justinian 541–549
- Recurrences of the first plague pandemic 558–750
- Early Muslim conquests 632–750
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- An Lushan Rebellion 755–763