In the penultimate week of January 2016, American archaeologists identified the site of the execution of the Salem witches, and climatologists declared the past year the hottest on record. These two news have more in common than it seems at first glance: scientists are increasingly attributing the massive witch hunt to the influence of climate cataclysms. "Lenta.ru" tried to figure out how adequately this hypothesis describes the events that took place in Europe in the XVI-XVII centuries and are now repeated in some countries of Africa and Asia.
Why they started to burn
Although practitioners of magic and witchcraft, women (as well as men) were persecuted in the ancient world, witch hunts are already a phenomenon of modern times. The "Dark" Middle Ages were much more tolerant of witches than the relatively enlightened and well-read preachers and rulers of the 16th-17th centuries. The official bull against witches was published in 1484 by Pope Innocent VIII, but the fires burned in full force only at the end of the next century, and the Lutherans and Calvinists were much more cruel than the Catholics. So, in the Saxon city of Quedlinburg with a population of 12 thousand people in 1589 in just one day, 133 "witches" were burned. The total number of victims of the terrorist campaign, which subsided only in the 18th century (when black magic was declared fiction, and the accusations of it - slander), reaches one million people. Moreover, most of the accusations against women were not at all out of revenge or self-interest, but out of a sincere desire to destroy the evil that threatens society.
But why did the witch-hunt flywheel start at the end of the 16th century? The references to medieval fanaticism clearly don't work. On the contrary, everyone agrees that it has something to do with the turbulent era of change that shook Europe at the beginning of modern times. This phenomenon is of the same order as the Reformation, religious wars, economic crisis, and so on. Some historians interpret the witch hunt as a purposeful fight against authoritative women - in order to curb them and maintain male dominance in a shattered society. Less feminist-oriented experts believe that the persecution of witches is an attack of high culture (educated nobility, representatives of the authorities and clergy) on the people, which, due to its pagan roots, rituals and customs, began to be perceived as devilish. Finally, persecution has benefited many:doctors got rid of competitors (healers and midwives), priests - from bearers of pagan rites, and the masses received scapegoats - the "culprits" of all troubles.
The trial of the Salem witch as depicted by a 19th century artist
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Climate and Witches
Scientists are still trying to find more rigorous explanations for the mass psychosis that swept Europe - something more tangible and measurable than personal motives. Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, drew attention to the fact that the witch hunt coincided with sharp climatic shifts in the northern hemisphere - the Little Ice Age.
Then, after 400 years of warm and even weather, mild winters of the medieval climatic optimum, the average annual temperature dropped by one or two degrees. Greenland was covered with glaciers, the summer was short and rainy, the Seine, Danube and Thames were frozen in winter. On the continent storms raged, blizzards, downpours destroyed crops. The peak of the Little Ice Age fell just in the 17th century - the apogee of the witch hunt.
Maybe this is just a coincidence? Oster collected quantitative data on the trials of witches in 11 European regions (from Scotland to Switzerland, from England to Estonia and Finland) and on weather conditions (the severity of winters, crop failures and other facts mentioned in local sources). I put the indicators averaged over decades (from 1520 to 1770) and across countries (with trials over witches as a dependent variable), removing the effect of significant events of a European scale (Thirty Years War and plague epidemics) using dummy variables without compromising statistical significance.
Although a small (0.10-0.15) coefficient of determination suggests that fluctuations in the number of processes are explained by temperature shifts by only 8-12 percent. Oster sees this as a compelling result given the fragmented and rough nature of the data. More detailed information on the Canton of Geneva (annual temperature shifts) made it possible to build a graph with a fairly convincing correlation: catastrophic weather events are part of the blame for burned and drowned women.
Harvest failure, hunger and old age
The persecution of "witches" did not stop with the invention of railways and television. Moreover, in the 21st century - a new era of changes - the number of those killed and lynched for witchcraft is constantly growing: in Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Colombia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea. In a 2010 survey conducted in 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of respondents admitted to believing in black magic.
The victims of the new witch hunt are burned alive, stoned, beheaded. The fight against witchcraft is even prescribed in the legislation. And again, as in the 17th century, older women are primarily accused of black magic, while young men who earn a reputation as guardians of morality and defenders of the people from the forces of evil are initiating the proceedings.
A Hindu from Bihar who was accused of witchcraft by her brother-in-law
Once again, scientists have tried to find a link between violence and climatic disasters. Edward Miguel analyzed material on 67 villages in Tanzania, an African country where witch hunts are commonplace. In Tanzanian villages, about one witch is killed every five years, most often the oldest family members. They are killed by their own kind. Miguel found out that in years of abnormal precipitation (droughts or floods), witches are killed twice as often. That is, for Tanzanians, they are not the "scapegoats" that the village blames for all the misfortunes: it is about the legal elimination of the least productive family members during a period of food shortages.
About simple explanations
As a result, instead of the cultural and psychological explanation of the witch-hunt (the fight against popular beliefs, the destruction of alternative centers of influence, the strengthening of public order), rigid natural determinism is established. Nothing special, just climatic cataclysms and hunger lead to senicide - the killing of old people, which in extreme situations is practiced by many peoples who have never even heard of witches.
This means that in order to prevent reprisals, it is necessary not to educate the people about their superstitions, but to fight hunger at the state level. It is also important to support the elderly. When old-age pensions were introduced in one of the provinces of South Africa in the early 1990s, the number of lynching against witches fell sharply, Miguel said.
But for all its persuasiveness, this explanation erases the historical uniqueness of the witch hunt - in Europe, in modern Asia and Africa. Still, witchcraft, delight and horror in front of him, its place in culture and social order is a completely independent phenomenon. And even the connection of witchcraft with more general processes can take many different forms: for example, the famous anthropologists Jean and John Komaroff explain the hysterical witch-hunt in Africa by the mechanics of the capitalist economy. The mysterious enrichment of some and the impoverishment of others makes Africans perceive the market as black magic, and in order to succeed, turn to real black magic (or accuse their rich neighbors of witchcraft).