Has a harmful element led to the collapse of one of the greatest powers in human history? It is possible. Research on the bones of Roman patricians showed that the concentration of lead in their organisms was significantly exceeded. The Romans used this highly toxic metal on a massive scale in everyday life - from wine production, through creams, cutlery, dishes, jewelry, to water pipes.
They had no idea that the highly poisonous lead attacked both internal organs and the nervous system. It can cause neurosis and other mental disorders. Is it because of lead that madness very often seized the minds of Roman emperors?
Is the theory that Rome fell because of lead, among others, true?
Three years ago, the prestigious American journal "Journal of the American Medical Association" published the results of a study of 500 men from the New Zealand town of Dunedin, who were born in the 1970s and as eleven-year-olds underwent the IQ and lead content tests for the first time. At that time, New Zealand was one of the countries with the highest concentration of lead in the air - mainly due to the leaded gasoline used at the time.
Could lead have made Roman emperors mad?
The boys' studies showed that they had close to 11 micrograms of lead for every deciliter of blood. Three decades later, scientists re-examined the same people. The result turned out to be shocking. People exposed to strong lead in childhood proved to be less socially adapted in adulthood, performed worse jobs, and had a lower social and professional status. They were also… stupider than their peers who had not been poisoned by lead. Their IQ was an average of 4.25 points. below.
There are many similar studies showing the devastating influence of lead on the psyche and intellectual abilities of people. People poisoned with lead suffer from the so-called lead disease, a serious disease that may result in kidney and liver failure, and myocardial infarction. In turn, the effect on the nervous system manifests itself in hallucinations, muscle tremors, impaired concentration, memory, headaches, irritability, coma, convulsions.
Today, the toxic effects of lead are well known, but the ancients had no idea about it, and they surrounded themselves with this substance on a massive scale in their daily lives.
Death Powder and Lead Sugar
Probably one of the most toxic cosmetics in human history comes from ancient Rome. We are talking about lead white, or cerusite, a rare mineral with a huge amount of lead. In those days, unlike today, a pale complexion was in vogue. Roman matrons smeared their faces with powdered cerusite to look beautiful. If they wanted a little pink for a pale complexion, they used red lead oxide - the so-called lead pass. They had no idea they were hurting themselves.
The Romans consumed very large amounts of poisonous lead
Patricians (and also patricians) powdered with lead cream took part in lavish feasts, saturnalia and games in such make-up. The wines in Rome poured out in enormous amounts. They were drunk with water. Today it is estimated that every citizen of the city of Rome drank about a liter of divine liquor a day.
Drinking started with breakfast and continued throughout the day. In this way, the organisms of the Romans assimilated subsequent doses of poisonous lead. All thanks to the drink preparation procedure. Grape juice was heated in lead vessels, thus obtaining a sweet syrup called defrutum. Throughout the procedure, the so-called lead sugar - lead acetate - highly toxic , although of a chronic effect, not one-time. So it can be said that the inhabitants of the ancient empire poisoned gradually.
Lead tap
This is not the end. Roman lead was also supplied by water from lead vessels, or flowing through lead pipes ... Water and sewage systems belong to the achievements of the Roman civilization. They were widely used. In the Eternal City, water from aqueducts, through sedimentation tanks and water towers, was channeled through lead water pipes to the city's baths, fountains and houses. Interestingly, some ancient researchers already suspected lead to be harmful to human organisms. Their voice, however, was ignored.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect and author of construction treaties, as well as a constructor of siege machines for Caesar and Octavian Augustus, mentioned that lead workers were always horribly pale. In his opinion, water from clay pipes was definitely healthier. The researcher's voice, however, did not break through to the consciousness of his contemporaries.
Pont du Gard aqueduct in France
To what extent did the Romans poison themselves with lead water? In 2015, scientists from Great Britain, the USA and France studied sediments from the vicinity of the Eternal City, specifically from the bottom of Trajan's Bay in Portus, 30 km from Rome. The results shocked the researchers. The water of the heyday of the imperial capital was indeed heavily poisoned. The concentration of lead in it was even a hundred times higher than in the nearby springs.
Money (does)… poison
Pecunia non olet - that is, money does not stink - this saying coined by Emperor Vespasian has become a permanent part of the linguistic heritage of Latin civilization. This is obviously a perverse statement intended to mockingly emphasize human greed - without limits. Referring to the abuse of lead and to paraphrase the famous quote - perversely one could say:money is not poisonous, because the inhabitants of the empire used toxic lead means of payment en masse and did not care at all about it (though out of ignorance rather than ignorance).
The Roman taste for lead was so great that it had an impact on the natural environment even then. Scientists who analyzed deep ice samples from the Arctic measured their lead content. The samples corresponded to the period from 1100 B.C.E. to 800 CE Research shows that lead levels rose sharply during the empire's prime, when it was massively mined. Environmental lead poisoning matched perfectly with the economic cycles. It grew in periods of prosperity, when the wealth of the society, and therefore consumption, also increased. How do we know it? The references to our time are disturbing. Especially since the end of the business cycle, recessions and crashes were reflected in the use of lead. In times of inflation, the Romans issued "empty money" - silver coins were replaced with lead coins, which were only silver-plated on the top. But they were poisonous…
Lead apocalypse?
Could the consumption of toxic substances in the scale of the entire population result in something more serious than just ailments? Some researchers believe that it is. Poisoning yourself with lead for generations gradually degenerated the Romans and eventually led to the fall of the empire. Such a catchy thesis was coined 35 years ago by the Nigerian geochemist Jerome Nriagu in an article published in the British New England Journal of Medicine. According to the researchers, absorbing the harmful substance could effectively impair the cognitive abilities of subsequent generations of Romans. In short, they became more and more ... stupid, less and less mentally efficient, as a result of which they lost the ability to conduct effective politics and defense. Eventually, the much less developed savage cultures brought Rome down.
Roman Forum - remains of the former capital of the Roman Empire
The "lead" theory - although it sounds very strong - is nowadays widely rejected by scientists. Reducing the causes of the end of the empire to lead is a drastic simplification of a whole series of processes.
The attempt to attribute lead madness to Roman emperors also sounds very tempting. Indeed, the rulers of the empire, such as Caligula, Tiberius and Nero, would rank high in the rankings of individuals with a highly distorted psyche. A large intensification of deviants, cruelty, unbalanced, extremely dangerous, neurotic, psychotic characters seems to be present in the Roman Julio-Claudian dynasty, i.e. in the heyday of the empire. Was the abuse of lead-mixed wine behind the madness of the Roman rulers? Today it is impossible to verify this, but we know many other cruelty and madmen on the thrones of civilization around the world who did not need lead to pursue the strangest and cruelest whims.
What is certain, however, is that by the hands of the "savages" from Germania and Asia, the natural environment was cleansed of the excessive concentration of the harmful element. Research on Arctic ice deposits has confirmed that after the end of the empire, the content of toxic lead in the ice decreased sharply ... This, in turn, sounds like a warning to contemporaries. There were lead warnings in Rome, but they would not be obeyed. Today it can be seen as a case study. The negative health effects of the abuse of certain raw materials or technologies may not be visible on the scale of one or even several generations. Later, however, it is difficult to withdraw from the solutions applied on a mass scale, especially if the social / state structure is guided by the primacy of unlimited expansion and consumption ...
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Internet:
Lead poisoning (lead) - symptoms, treatment and consequences of lead poisoning - accessed May 19, 2020
Lead (from gasoline) stays with you for life - access May 19, 2020
The causes of the fall of the Roman Empire - accessed May 19, 2020
Evidence of lead poisoning in the Roman Empire survives in the Greenland ice - accessed May 19, 2020