In the fourteenth century, the "Great Black Death" was called the fierce rampant plague epidemics that claimed many more lives in Europe than the most devastating wars. According to data collected by order of Pope Clement IV, 48 million people died - the world's population did not exceed half a billion at that time. And this is just one example. But there were also smallpox, cholera, typhus …
Of course, the triumphs of medicine have caused epidemics and pandemics to curb appetite. Although … The habitual and inevitable, like rainy weather, the annual flu in 1957 cost the lives of more than a million earthlings, and in 1968 - one and a half million. This is not to mention diseases such as AIDS.
The agonizing why
People initially asked the questions “what to do” and “how to treat”. It is much more difficult with the "why" question. Few asked them. And if he did, then for many centuries the collective reason did not advance beyond the hypothesis of "God's punishment".
But that's not all
Somewhere in the vastness of the steppes, a nomadic people lived for themselves - by today's standards, they barely stretched them to a large city, to a decent microdistrict. They grazed cattle, lived quietly and peacefully. And suddenly … In a matter of years, this people becomes a warlike tribe, with caress and drag rallies the surrounding inhabitants around itself and turns into hordes of Genghis Khan or Attila's "God's hammer".
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Again, to the question of how this happened, historians are diligently looking for answers and even finding. But the question "why" is worse. True, our original historian-ethnographer Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov published his answer to it: these peoples feel in themselves a kind of "passionarity." And what exactly is this? In translation - just "passion".
Why is the flame of this passion kindled? The question is both little asked and unanswered.
There is a formulation attributed to Albert Einstein: “Great discoveries are made like this: everyone knows that this cannot be done; then there is someone who does not suspect about it - it is he who makes the discovery”.
It is difficult to say whether Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky, the founder of the new science of heliobiology, knew or did not know that the search for answers to these "why" is considered hopeless and hopeless. But one can say: he found the answer.
Back in the fall of 1915, he spoke at the Moscow Archaeological Institute with a report "Periodic influence of the Sun on the biosphere of the Earth", where he convincingly proved that the cause of epidemics is our daylight. And in March 1918 he presented to the Academic Council of Moscow University his doctoral dissertation "Investigation of the periodicity of the world-historical process."
Earthly echo of solar storms
Chizhevsky studied all the information about plague epidemics that happened over fourteen centuries. Having built a graph of the mortality of the inhabitants of Augsburg and plotted information about the aurora borealis of those years, gleaned from the chronicles, he revealed a clear relationship between these seemingly unrelated phenomena. But maybe this is inherent exclusively in the "black death"? Not.
At the height of the cholera epidemic of 1364-1367, Chinese chroniclers noted the appearance on the face of a star of such large sunspots that they could be observed with the naked eye. An increase in solar activity was noted during the violent outbreak of cholera in India in 1769. And in 1892, the maximum number of cases of the famous cholera outbreak in Hamburg fell on August 20, when the sun was most active.
Solar activity is subject to several overlapping cycles - the 11-year discovered by Lockyer, the 35-year calculated by Jung, and the 60-year. It turned out that almost all epidemics recorded by chroniclers and historians obey the same periodicity. Even the aforementioned influenza pandemics in 1957 and 1968 took place 11 years later. If two or three cycles coincide, disasters become truly apocalyptic.
“Everything on Earth, - wrote Chizhevsky, - synchronously comes into convulsive shudder: terrible showers, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic activity, aurora, magnetic and electric storms … Living matter also goes berserk. Epidemics and pandemics, epizootics and epiphytotics sweep across the globe, tearing tens and hundreds of thousands of victims out of their lives. These are the years of “gladness and pestilence”. Sharp deviations from the usual course of chronic and acute diseases appear, the total mortality in all countries in these years reaches its maximum values.
Infectious diseases undergo unusual modifications. The number of mutations in plants increases dramatically. Microbes and viruses also experience the frenzy of solar particles and radiation. The nervous system is not inferior to them, this subtle device of all living beings, from invertebrates to humans. Locusts make devastating raids in these years, migrating, supposedly without any special external reasons, fish, birds, rodents, large predators. All living and nonliving on the planet is in motion. Everything is included in the general whirlwind of unrest, anxiety and confusion."
By the way, even a completely healthy person reacts to changes in solar activity (and by no means as powerful as described above) quite sharply. Japanese physician Mayumura analyzed the traffic accident reports in ten cities. On a day when a fairly common chromospheric flare was observed on the Sun, and the number of spots increased, the number of RTAs also quadrupled.
Of course, the Sun is not the only culprit in epidemics. Another answer was proposed ten years ago by a group of scientists who were interested in completely different space objects - comets. Our ancestors with enviable persistence saw their appearance in the sky as a bad omen - and, it seems, were not far from the truth. True, this is not true for every comet. But in those cases when the Earth passes through the "visible nothing" of the comet's tail, according to this hypothesis, organic substances enter the atmosphere, contributing to mutations of microorganisms, including pathogens. As a result, the relatively harmless ones become deadly, and the well-known ones cease to predictably respond to drugs.
In support of their idea, the authors refer to historical statistics: the most deadly epidemics and pandemics happened a year or two after the passage of our planet through the cometary plume.
But let's move from medicine to history, or, in the words of Chizhevsky, historiometry.
The choice is ours
From the point of view of the "physical foundations of the historical process" formulated by Chizhevsky, the phenomena and events of world history acquire new meaning and significance.
“It is extremely important both in purely scientific and practical terms,” the scientist wrote, “is the establishment of the fact that historical and social phenomena do not occur arbitrarily, not at any time, not indifferent to time, but obey clear laws in connection with physical phenomena of the surrounding world and can arise only when this is favored by the entire complex combination of interaction of political, economic and other factors in the human world and physical factors in the world of inorganic nature.
The most powerful outbreak on August 9, 2011. The pictures were taken through special filters, that is, only the solar corona is visible
The question involuntarily arises: are we not in bondage to the Sun, are we not in bondage to its electrical forces? If you like, yes, but our bondage is relative, and we ourselves can control the chains put on our wrists, and the works that are intended for us to perform.
The sun does not force us to do this or that, but it forces us to do something. Usually humanity follows the line of least resistance and plunges itself into oceans of its own blood. During this period, leaders, generals, leaders appear and wars, uprisings, etc. begin. However, all these movements are not necessary: everything depends on the events that preceded them. So, for example, if a war was already fought before the period of maximum excitability, then general excitement can result in a desire for peace - peace at all costs. History knows examples of mass disturbances that have nothing to do with bloodshed: religious movements, pilgrimages, the flourishing of parliamentarism, the focus of public attention on trials, reforms, etc."
Furthermore. According to Chizhevsky's theory, even the relationship between the authorities and the people, family strife, the stormy or peaceful course of parliamentary sessions, the height of battles or truce on the fronts of wars or revolutions - everything ultimately depends on the activity of sunspots. Even the ups and downs in the fate of historical figures - Napoleon, for example - clearly demonstrate the connection with the cycles of solar activity.
However, what has been said does not mean at all that you and I are weak-willed puppets in the hands of a powerful heavenly puppeteer. Chizhevsky only explained where the energy comes from the very "passionarity" about which Lev Gumilyov spoke. And what to focus this passionarity on is another question. After all, equally passionate personalities were, say, the same Napoleon and the great Indian king-peacemaker Ashoka, who, realizing how cruel the price of his victory over the neighboring state of Kalinga, renounced wars forever.
Equally passionate are the founder of the concept of nonviolent civil resistance, Mahatma Gandhi, who achieved Indian independence, and the "great helmsman" Mao Zedong, who revered human blood as the cheapest juice.
The sun is the sun, but the human choice always remains with us …
Yuri Suprunenko