Last evening we took a cable car to the mountain village of Erace. The cable car travelled 3 klms and rose some 800 metres offering spectacular views over Trapani. Often, Erace is in the clouds... we were lucky to see the view through the (usual) thick haze. Now, the town prospers from tourists... but little imagination is needed to see this town in medieval times... in the middle of winter... snowed in... starving after poor harvests in the preceding summer... running out of wood for fuel... suffering a medical epidemic of one sort or another. Why did the good citizens of Erace pay a high price to live in such a difficult (but beautiful) place?
Defence... right?... they wanted a good defence for their town during a period of incessant regional conflicts! That's the explanation I have accepted up until now. My ride on the cable car has lead me to discount that theory. On the way to the top, our cable car passed over any number of rocky crags well suited for good defence of a village... providing better water catchment... providing better agricultural land... better wood supply... and importantly, not isolating the village. Why add another 600 metres of leg-numbing labour to get the better address?
The answer probably has some connection to malaria. The Roman empire caused population movement... and with population movement came malaria into Italy. The Romans called the disease the "bad air" disease... because it was caught in swampy smelly areas (where mosquitoes like to breed)... and the Roman word for 'bad air' happens to be 'mal'aria'. Malaria was a big killer in Italy... right up to the 19th century. The general rule of thumb has been that it infected 10% of the population and killed each year some 0.5% of Italians. Malaria was a bigger killer than war... but still well behind malnutrition.
Why did "bad air" disease cause people to build towns right on top of big hills? Mosquitoes need pools of water to breed. There are fewer pools on mountain sides than on the flood plains. Mosquitoes can fly... but only relatively small distances... and they don't cope with wind all that well. Expanding their breeding territories up the mountain side becomes a big problem if pools of water are separated by relatively large distances and wind is present. Medieval Italians would have identified that "bad air" afflicts very few people who live in mountain villages. They probably did their sums and figured that they would lose fewer citizens from starvation and hypothermia than they would lose to "bad air" disease.
Is there any supportive evidence for this theory? Today, we visited Segesta... a Greek colony 20 klms inland and surrounded by large mountains... but the Greeks chose to build on a modest knoll that offered good defensive geography. They colonised without the worry of "bad air" disease. In their time malaria was still confined to Africa. They could concentrate their efforts on building beautiful temples.
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