Why Rome Fell

9 The Malaria Hypothesis

This book was composed during the Covid-19 pandemic that swept round the globe in 2020–2021, carrying death and destruction in its wake, creating havoc, and paralyzing the economy in a number of countries. No natural disaster had ever come close to this worldwide plague in scale, intensity or duration since the “Spanish Flu” of 1918–19 or the Black Death of 1348.

This totally unexpected catastrophe may have made at least some people conscious of the puniness of mankind in the face of nature and made them more open to the suggestion of the power of nature to disrupt, or even destroy, past societies. It is, therefore, necessary to take such claims seriously while guarding against jumping to conclusions.

There is no shortage of such hypotheses in regard to the ancient world, not least in respect of the “fall” of the Roman Empire in the West. One such view is offered in a recent book by Kyle Harper: “The fate of Rome was played out by emperors and barbarians, senators and generals, soldiers and slaves. But it was equally decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes and solar cycles…. In an unintended conspiracy with nature, the Romans created a disease ecology that unleashed the latent power of pathogen evolution. The Romans were soon engulfed by the overwhelming force of what we would today call emerging infectious diseases.” (Harper 2017, p. 4 f.)

The latest culprit to be charged in this regard is malaria, giving rise to headlines in mainstream media, such ...