Colossal ecological destruction is a reality today.
Lead - the ancient killer of Rome - not everyone knows that perhaps the world's first ecological catastrophe dates back to the times of Ancient Rome. There is a version that the decline of the once mighty empire was predetermined by the systematic household use of lead, a very toxic element.
Dawn of civilization and environmental problems
Kevin Rosman, a scientist from Australia, was studying Greenland ice from a drilled well. Then an unexpected discovery followed: he took samples of rocks, correlated with an interval from 150 BC. before 50 AD showed an excess of the permissible lead content by four times. It is quite logical to blame 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 ore from the Rio Tinto deposit, respectively, showed complete identity.
Why did the Romans need lead? It is paradoxical that representatives of such a highly developed civilization, especially in terms of science and technology, did not have the slightest idea of how toxic lead was: it was widely used in construction, laid water pipes, and made dishes. The people of Rome believed that lead significantly improved the taste of wines. Lead was even contained in women's whitewash.
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The scale of the use of lead in ancient Rome is impressive - approximately four kilograms per year per capita. In the modern United States, this consumption is only two kilograms higher. Lead and health are incompatible concepts.
The tragic consequences of lead poisoning in ancient Rome
And yet - weren't scientists like Rosman rushed to conclusions, who considered mass lead poisoning one of the compelling reasons for the decline and death of Rome? To understand this issue, let's put an auxiliary one - what are the possible consequences of lead intoxication of the human body? The main focus of the lesion falls on the nervous system, kidneys, circulatory organs. Mental disorders are also frequent. A gray-lilac streak may appear on the gums, and faces take on an earthy hue. And all this - not to mention paralysis, lack of appetite, acute bowel disorders.
Research carried out in 1978 convinced that even microscopic lead poisoning is sufficient for the subsequent chronic distraction and a decrease in intellectual potential.
The thesis about the depravity of morals in ancient Rome became a common place. It is appropriate to assume that the lead-flavored wine led to such a disastrous condition.
Fish, as you know, rots from the head. So in Rome, the tone was set by the first persons of the state, especially Nero and Caligula, who became a symbol of moral decay. According to the historian Suetonius, the latter did not hesitate to have sexual contacts with his own sisters, then giving them to his other lovers. The imperial palace, in fact, was turned into a brothel, where rich aristocrats, invited to the court, indulged in insane orgies.
As for Nero, according to the research of other historians, he loved to dress in animal skins, to pounce on victims tied to poles in this form and greedily satisfy his sexual desire. Completely exhausted, he willingly gave himself up to the former slave Dorifor. He even … married him. However, before that there was still a young man Spor, and another wedding ceremony. Who would doubt that Rome was doomed …
Why did the Franklin expedition die?
In the middle of the 19th century, a tragedy occurred that once again reflected the perniciousness of how lead destroys human physical health and mental abilities - this is the death of the expedition of the English polar explorer John Franklin.
The captain himself was 59 years old. The ships "Erebus" and "Terror" under his command left the Thames estuary in 1845, May 19, and headed for the search for the Northwest Passage. For reference: this is the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Both ships were equipped with the latest technology: the hulls were sheathed with sheet iron, under the cabins there was water heating. Movement was possible both under sail and on a steam engine. Each ship had a library with a total of 1200 volumes. The sailors dined on silver and porcelain to the music of a barrel organ, in the arsenal of which there were up to 50 tunes.
They stocked up on provisions for several years of sailing, taking several thousand cans of canned food.
In early July, the expedition met with two whaling vessels in Baffin Bay. Following this, the story ends abruptly: 130 people seemed to dissolve among the ice.
The public became alarmed only a few years later. Several dozen rescue expeditions were unsuccessful.
Finally, in 1851, the graves of three members of the expedition - John Hartnel, John Torrington, William Brain - were discovered on Beachy Island. Three years later, an Aboriginal Eskimo said that he saw the British polar explorers wandering on foot - their ships were crushed by ice.
A dinghy, with two dead bodies in it, was a terrible find. They had guns in their hands, the polar vestments remained intact. I was surprised by another thing: the objects in the boat did not correspond much to the extreme situation in which people fell - toothbrushes, soap, books, even a whole desk. It was far from immediately possible to answer the questions "why" and "why".
Only a century later, in 1981, the scientist Dr. Owen Beaty came to grips with uncovering the mystery of the death of the Franklin expedition. The results of the analysis of bone fragments were shocking: the lead content was off scale, exceeding the norm by ten times!
It remained to prove that most of the polar explorers had indeed been poisoned by lead. For this in 1986, the remains of members of the expedition were exhumed on Beachy Island.
The frozen ground mummified the bodies of the dead, they are perfectly preserved. One of the bodies had a wide longitudinal incision - apparently, the ship's doctor performed an autopsy, trying to establish a diagnosis even then. The weight of another polar explorer barely reached forty kilograms.
Lead has a very harmful property as it accumulates in the human body. This is what happened to the corpses of Beachy Island. Analysis of hair, bones and tissues left no more doubts: lead intoxication had taken place.
Franklin's team fell victim to … seemingly ordinary-looking canned food, sealed, however, at the seams with lead, which quickly became part of the contents of the cans and with each meal the situation worsened. Probably, the minds of the sailors were clouded, which is why they stubbornly dragged along absolutely useless objects. Thus, if only lead from the seams of cans killed more than a hundred people, it’s even scary to imagine what happened to the Romans who ate from lead dishes and drank from lead water pipes.
Do we face the fate of the ancient Romans?
The current lead content in the ice mass of Greenland is already 25-50 times higher than the level of the first ecological disaster. Not to mention the fact that the number of cars has increased several times, we breathe their exhaust gases, we inhale the waste of metallurgical production. Insidious lead accumulates along the roadsides, on the lands used. It enters our body with dust and food. And how it all ends is already known from ancient history …