The current prevailing perception is that human impacts on the biological realm have been overwhelmingly negative. Here, we test this narrative by considering the consequences for aspects of floristic diversity of the ‘Black Death era’ (1300–1400 ce ), where one third of Europe's population died within half a decade. Based on evidence from 109 pollen records spanning the Common Era, we find increasing floristic diversity from...

Aim It is widely reported that aspects of present‐day global biodiversity are declining, with humans largely to blame. However—perhaps paradoxically—in Europe, floristic diversity and human populations have grown in tandem for millennia. Disturbance intensity and habitat heterogeneity potentially explain this phenomenon, though we lack understanding of how human land use intensity affected biodiversity at numerous spatial scal...