Lead - the ancient killer of Rome - not all, know that perhaps the world's first ecological catastrophe correlates with the times of Ancient Rome. There is a version that the decline of the once powerful empire was predetermined by the systematic household use of lead, an element of very toxic.
The dawn of civilization and the problems of ecology
Kevin Rosman, a scientist from Australia, was studying Greenland ice from a drilled well. This was followed by an unexpected discovery: the samples of rocks taken by him, correlated with the interval from 150 BC. until 50 AD. showed an excess of the permissible content of lead four times. It is quite logical to lay the blame on the ancient Romans. In the south-west of modern Spain, they carried out active work on the extraction of lead ore. Lead isotopes 206 and 207 from Greenland ice and ores from the Rio Tinto deposit, respectively, showed complete identity.
Why did you need lead to the Romans? Paradoxically, the representatives of such a highly developed civilization, especially in the scientific and technical sense, did not have the faintest idea of how toxic is lead: widely used in construction, laying water pipes, and making dishes. The inhabitants of Rome believed that lead greatly improves the taste of wines. Lead was contained even in the female whites.
A lead pipe through which water flowed in ancient Rome
A lead pipe through which water flowed in ancient Rome
More pipes in ancient Rome
More pipes in ancient Rome
The scale of the use of lead in Ancient Rome is impressive - about four kilograms per year per capita. In modern US this consumption is only two kilograms higher. Lead and health are incompatible concepts.
The tragic consequences in ancient Rome of lead poisoning
And yet - did scientists of the Rosmann type, who considered massive lead poisoning, one of the reasons for the decline and death of Rome, hurried to conclusions? To understand this question, we will put an auxiliary one - what are the possible consequences of lead intoxication of the human body? The main focus of the lesion is on the nervous system, kidneys, circulatory system. Quite often, and mental disorders. On the gums may appear a gray-lilac strip, the faces acquire an earthy tinge. And all this - not to mention paralysis, lack of appetite, acute intestinal disorders.
Studies conducted in 1978 convinced that even a microscopic lead poisoning is enough for subsequent chronic absent-mindedness and a decrease in intellectual potential.
Common position was the thesis of the depravity of morals in ancient Rome. It is appropriate to assume that lead-flavored wine led to such a pernicious condition.
Fish, as you know, rotting from the head. Here and in Rome, the tone of the first persons of the state, especially those that became the symbol of the moral decay of Nero and Caligula, set the tone. According to the historian Suetonius, the latter did not disdain sex with his sisters, giving them to other lovers. The Imperial Palace, in fact, was turned into a brothel, where rich aristocrats, called to the court, indulged in insane orgies.
As for Nero, he, according to the researches of other historians, liked to dress in animal hide, in such a form attack on the victims tied to the pillars and greedily satisfy his sexual desire. Completely weakened, he willingly gave himself to the former slave Dorfir. On him, he even ... got married. However, before this there was still a young man Spore, and another wedding ceremony. Who would doubt that Rome was doomed ...