[HN Gopher] Did lead poisoning cause downfall of Roman Empire? T...
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Did lead poisoning cause downfall of Roman Empire? The jury is
still out
Author : Tomte
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-07-06 04:26 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Zevis wrote:
| Honestly, looking at how Republicans are divorcing themselves
| from reality makes me theorize that there are similar
| physiological/chemical effects at play in modern society (and the
| rise of similar movements in Europe). A lot of these people grew
| up when lead was far more ubiquitous. When environmental
| regulations were far less stringent. I wouldn't be surprised if
| chemicals were having long-term effects that we're only really
| seeing play out now.
| bserge wrote:
| It's an alluring prospect, blaming everything on some external
| factor.
|
| The reality might be that we're just barely out of the
| primitive stage of evolution and might not even make it further
| at this rate.
| Zevis wrote:
| I'm not sure it's alluring. It's possible. I'm not sure our
| inherent psychology is sufficient to cause what's happening
| in the US.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| We have likely already seen the effects start to play out:
| The lead-crime hypothesis is the association between elevated
| blood lead levels in children and increased rates of crime,
| delinquency, and recidivism later in life.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| One of the more compelling factors I've heard of for the fall of
| the Roman Empire is their tax system for agricultural land.
| Essentially it's a per-acre tax regardless of the productivity
| and ease of access, with the obvious problem of marginal land
| getting abandoned because the tax wasn't worth paying.
|
| I read that a lot of the invading tribes were treated as
| _liberators_ from the Romans for that very reason. Malthus was in
| full force in the era, so you had edge-of-starvation villages
| next to productive land that _could_ be cultivated but _wasn 't_
| due to taxes, and the barbarians rolling in meant you could do
| that now.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Asking the question of when the Roman Empire fell leads you into
| a decently difficult task of asking what constitutes a fall, and
| indeed what actually fell in the first place.
|
| The traditional answer of 476 is interesting for things that
| _didn 't_ happen in 476:
|
| * The capital of the Roman Empire wasn't sacked, nor was the
| capital of the Western Roman Empire sacked.
|
| * The last claimant of Augustus of the Western Roman Empire
| wasn't killed. (Although the imperial court in the Eastern Roman
| Empire didn't recognize his claim).
|
| * No vestiges of Roman rule, such as the Roman Senate, ended.
|
| * Contemporary political discussions didn't feel that a major
| event or break in history had happened.
|
| * Archaeological evidence doesn't point to a major break in the
| economic conditions or the material record of the era (that would
| come later, with the Plague of Justinian).
|
| Of course, many pedants will come out saying that the Roman
| Empire really fell in 1453, because that it is when the Ottomans
| sacked Constantinople. But again, why 1453?
|
| * Why not 1204, when the Latin Empire sacked Constantinople and
| ruled from there for 60 years?
|
| * Why not 1461, when the Empire of Trebizond (another rump state
| of the Byzantine Empire created by the sack in 1204) fell to the
| Ottomans?
|
| * Or indeed, why not 1475, when the Principality of Theodoro,
| itself the rump state of the Empire of Trebizond, also gave in to
| the Ottomans?
|
| * Or 1460, when the Despotate of Morea--the last part of the
| Byzantine Empire supposedly conquered by the Ottomans--was
| disestablished as a tributary state by the Ottomans?
|
| * Indeed, it's worth pointing that the last Byzantine Empire had
| to have his accession to the throne confirmed by the Ottoman
| Emperor of the time (Murad II)--the Byzantine Empire by the 1440s
| was itself basically an unruly tributary state of the Ottoman
| Empire.
|
| So going back to the article's question, if lead poisoning is
| supposedly one of the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire,
| which fall of which Roman Empire are they talking about, and why
| _didn 't_ it contribute to the not-falling of the contemporary
| not-exactly-the-Roman-Empires running about?
| lqet wrote:
| Why not 1806, when the Holy Roman Empire, considered by many in
| the middle ages to be the legal successor of the Roman Empire,
| was dissolved?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Because, though they claimed that, we see little sense in
| which they were in fact the "legal successor" of the Roman
| Empire.
| chris_j wrote:
| I've heard it said that Roman empire finally ended in 1283 with
| the Norman conquest of Gwynedd, since that would mark the end
| of the period of uninterrupted Roman rule (assuming one
| believes that the rule of the Welsh princes descended from
| Roman rule in Britain nearly a millennium earlier).
|
| The reality is that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire
| wasn't a sharply defined event and more of a process that took
| an awfully long time. The idea that lead poisoning contributed
| to that process is an interesting one but I'm not sure that the
| article answers any questions about that.
| tus89 wrote:
| > The traditional answer of 476 is interesting for things that
| didn't happen in 476
|
| I think you are focusing too much on what happened inside
| Italy. Yes, the state in the location continued on without much
| change. But the _Empire_ was over, no longer were Roman legions
| wandering all over Western Europe, and had been receding for
| the previous century.
| [deleted]
| CalChris wrote:
| Rome had already been sacked in 410.
|
| 16-year old emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed, but his
| life was spared which is a better fate than Vercingetorix
| received at the hands of Caesar.
|
| Odoacer installed himself as ruler and the seat of power moved
| to Ravenna. So basically all vestiges of _Roman_ rule ended.
| dangerbird2 wrote:
| By 476, Rome hadn't been the primary capital of the Western
| empire for almost 200 years. Diocletian moved the capital of
| the Western Augustus from Rome to Milan in 286[1]. The
| Capital then moved from Milan to Ravenna in 402, where it
| remained until Odoacer "reunited" the Western and Eastern
| empires. The Roman Senate long outlasted the Western Emperor,
| existing at least until 603.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy#Regions_and_capitals
| fallingknife wrote:
| I like to think 363, the end of the rule of Julian, the last
| pagan emperor or Rome, and winner of the last real military
| victories of the Western Empire. But I make no claims of
| objectivity here.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| The Ottomans, in holding together a multi-ethnic, multi-
| religous empire, frankly did something that seems more Roman
| than what the Byzantines did.
|
| Perhaps it fell in the 4th century, perhaps it fell in 1922.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_antiquity I should say 3rd
| not 4th.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Geographically at least that's more an extension of the
| Persian empire than Rome.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I disagree. Yes, Mesopotamia was usually controlled by the
| Parthians or Sassanids, but everywhere else was squarely
| Roman sphere of influence. And they never controlled Persia
| proper. That would be
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_Iran. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_empires for a
| fairly stable rough division of geography both before and
| after they period too.
| christkv wrote:
| I've always thought about the fall of an empire as the moment
| the bureaucratic wheels seize to function and the shared
| cultural values fall apart.
|
| If a new war lord storms in but just sets themselves on the
| throne with the machinery in place the empire staggers on
| culturally and bureaucratically.
|
| A mongol like situation and the whole structure and culture is
| shattered.
|
| Rome in 476 I think had a broken bureaucratic system and
| shattered culture.
|
| The Byzantines kept that stuff in place until the final fall of
| Constantinople.
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| > wheels seize to function
|
| It's 'cease' but I can't imagine a more appropriate use of
| seize, as it's a wheel/gears metaphor!
| christkv wrote:
| The dangers of typing on an iphone SE :)
| dmichulke wrote:
| For those who'd like to know more, play Europa Universalis 4,
| it starts in 1444 and you can play all of the abovementioned
| states.
|
| Not recommended for beginners though (except the Ottomans).
| afpx wrote:
| Why did cultural and technological development seem to subside
| after 476?
| jcranmer wrote:
| What makes you think it subsided after 476 and not, say, 235?
|
| I'm not an expert in Late Antiquity, but it should be
| recalled that when most people think of Rome and Roman
| innovations, we usually harken back to Classical Rome, that
| of say from 200 BC to 100 or so. If you think about Roman
| political figures you know, or Roman escapades you remember,
| or Roman authors you read, chances are you're going back to
| that time.
|
| Of course, there is _one_ very, very, very major cultural
| institution after the Crisis of the Third Century that Rome
| bequeathed to the world. But many--perhaps most--people would
| stridently object to considering it Roman. I am of course
| talking about Christianity.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Augustine was one of its foremost practitioners and was
| fully inculcated in Roman culture. His writing is as good
| as anything produced during the classical era. The
| Confessions are one of the most significant texts in all of
| Latin literature.
|
| If we see Christianity as a shift in focus rather than a
| break, that pushes the "downfall" back to 400 AD or later
| at the least.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The fall of the Roman empire interpreted as a moment has no
| explanation because as you point out, there was no specific
| moment to explain. The fall of the Roman empire interpreted as
| a process taking place over centuries has an explanation, and
| longterm factors like lead poisoning fit the bill.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Perhaps a more fitting replacement for 'fall' is "failure to
| rise".
|
| The Roman empire had plenty of places to expand to (much of
| Africa, all of Russia/Asia). Yet they didn't manage that.
| omalleyt wrote:
| It controlled most all the resource-producing regions of
| Africa north of the Sahara. Russia and Germania were
| densely wooded or covered in plains, in either case
| sparsely populated and not of substantial interest to a
| rich Mediterranean power. Persia was the only viable region
| of expansion, but after Trajan's inability to incorporate
| them, the effort seems to have been abandoned
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'm dubious that this is the explanation, it's too simple and
| too neat. Real life is messy and complex and usually defies
| simple explanations.
|
| This explanation also strips agency from the various peoples
| who made their own decisions to setup autonomous Roman style
| rule, throw off Roman rule, or peel off Roman territory and
| traditions for their own pre-existing polity.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Implicit in the hypothesis, it seems to me, is the idea
| that the Roman Empire was the good and proper state of
| affairs, which its administrators could and should have
| maintained in perpetuity, if not for having had their
| brains pickled by lead.
|
| As you point out, a whole lot of the Empire's subjects had
| a very different take on the matter.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The fact that quality of life improved for the average
| person after Rome fell, and the fact that the average
| person probably knew that would happen, is likely to have
| contributed to the fall.
| starkd wrote:
| You know what also strips agency from people making their
| own decisions?
|
| Toxic heavy metal poisoning.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| To some degree, yes. But this telling still has (as a
| sibling comment put it) an implicit assumption that the
| empire was good and stable, and the _only_ thing that
| matters was the lead poisoning of the elites.
| [deleted]
| aliasEli wrote:
| The decline and fall of the Roman Empire was very likely caused
| by a combination of factors. The article makes a reasonable case
| that lead poisoning could be one of them.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| Yep. Another plausible cause that doesn't get as much traction
| is climate change - particularly, the cooling period during the
| second and third centuries that may have contributed to the
| fall of the Han dynasty and the Roman crisis of the third
| century.
|
| Although Rome, China, and (not mentioned earlier) Perisa
| managed to reconstitute themselves, the subsequent decline in
| trade both within and across empires had to have had an effect
| (although to what extent, I'm sure others on here know more
| about it tham I do).
| jnmandal wrote:
| This sounds super interesting. Could you share some resources
| to read up on this?
| wavefunction wrote:
| I thought it was the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople? I think
| it's pretty well understood that the Western Roman Empire towards
| its end was plagued by pandemics, in-fighting, self-interest and
| loss of centralized control, and the pressures of migrating
| peoples due to climate change. The weakening of the Imperial
| power coincided with the rise of the power of the Christian
| church supplanting the anemic WRE state.
| pfraze wrote:
| That's the trouble with the lead-poisoning theory, it's one of
| those things where you can describe all the issues as the net
| result of poison.
|
| The rise of the church always interests me in this story. As I
| understand it, Christianity was a kind of rebellious
| liberalizing movement which the state ultimately tried to coopt
| (Constantine). It's pre-state adoption was a movement away from
| more brutal practices, such as crucifixion. Eventually it
| developed into a competing power structure.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| > As I understand it, Christianity was a kind of rebellious
| liberalizing movement
|
| A religion popular with slaves which promised a better life
| after death. As described by Nietzsche ad nauseum.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Ottomans reuniting the eastern Mediterranean thereafter doesn't
| feel like a fall.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Mehmed II did declare himself Kayser-i Rum after taking
| Constantinople so perhaps you're right.
| sol_invictus wrote:
| Interesting considering the world currently has a plastics
| poisoning problem
| atatatat wrote:
| ...and everyone's too proud(scared?) to admit they could be
| negatively impacted by environmental concerns.
| mbauman wrote:
| We continue to have lead poisoning problems.
| tigen wrote:
| And arsenic in the food supply
| SeanLuke wrote:
| If I might insert an almost entirely unrelated tidbit. In 49 BC
| Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, trespassing the legal limit on
| his ruling territory, and marking in some sense the start of his
| conquest of the known world. Hence the terms "crossing the
| Rubicon" and Caesar's famous saying "The die has been cast".
|
| Fast forward to modern times, and people in the area of Romagna,
| near Ravenna, Rimini, and Cesena, had long claimed with no
| evidence that a polluted little creek in the region was _the
| actual_ Rubicon: though its specific identification had long been
| lost to time. Nonetheless they named it "Il Rubicone". The mouth
| of the river opens directly south of Cesenatico, a beach town on
| the Adriatic and the family home of my in-laws. See the bust of
| Caesar on this bridge over the mouth:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@44.166995,12.440708,3a,75y,274....
|
| Now Italians are famous for unnecessarily goosing local legends
| to make their neighborhoods more historically important than they
| are. (For example though Leonardo da Vinci _did_ draw a small
| survey of Cesenatico 's historic canal -- not related to the
| Rubicon -- for the Borgia Popes, that's not enough for the
| locals: the town has a local plaque saying he _created_ the canal
| despite the fact that it preexisted him by hundreds of years.)
| But as it so happens, historical research culminating in the late
| '90s has verified the river's legend: the creek is in fact the
| actual Rubicon. In Italy, folk history goes way _way_ back.
| rozab wrote:
| It sure does.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemnos#Modern_period
|
| > On 8 October 1912, during the First Balkan War, Lemnos became
| part of Greece. The Greek navy under Rear Admiral Pavlos
| Kountouriotis took it over without any casualties from the
| occupying Turkish Ottoman garrison, who were returned to
| Anatolia. Peter Charanis, born on the island in 1908 and later
| a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University recounts
| when the island was occupied and Greek soldiers were sent to
| the villages and stationed themselves in the public squares.
| Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked
| like. "What are you looking at?" one of them asked. "At
| Hellenes," the children replied. "Are you not Hellenes
| yourselves?" a soldier retorted. "No, we are Romans." the
| children replied.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| random diversion, but in the US at least, Jeep Wranglers come
| in a Rubicon version, with that word printed prominently on the
| hood/bonnet.
|
| It's supposedly the commonly purchased trim level because it
| costs more, so Rubicon the word is used for wealth ostentation.
|
| I've made a sport (a demented sport admittedly) out of asking
| folks with them what "Rubicon" means. I've not yet found a
| correct answer.
| hhhhhdsgs wrote:
| on a jeep it refers to the fact that the particular trim
| level is able to successfully navigate the famous rubicon
| trail - a offroading trail. no wonder people are confused by
| your question
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Pretty sure the Jeeps are named after the Rubicon Trail in
| California. Why it's called that, I have no idea.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Rubicon is also a reference to the Rubicon trial, a popular
| 4x4 trial running from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe. The trial
| was named in 1840, and may itself be a reference to caesar's
| crossing.
|
| https://www.edcgov.us/Government/Rubicon/pages/Rubicon_Trail.
| ..
| nucleardog wrote:
| > I've made a sport (a demented sport admittedly) out of
| asking folks with them what "Rubicon" means. I've not yet
| found a correct answer.
|
| Did any of the "incorrect" answers include "it's named after
| an off-roading trail"? Because it's named after an off-
| roading trail used by Jeep as a testing/proving ground[0].
|
| Most of their trail rated / trailhawk models contain some
| sort of nod to off roading trails. E.g., their "Renegade"
| contains maps of popular trails embossed into various bits of
| plastic.[1]
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubicon_Trail
|
| [1] https://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2016/06/jeep-
| renegade-ea...
| nradov wrote:
| It makes you wonder what hidden public health problems are
| impacting us and will only be understood centuries later. Will
| endocrine disruptor chemicals like phthalates cause the downfall
| of the American empire? The jury is still out.
| Zevis wrote:
| I feel like we're already seeing the effects of chemicals like
| lead now. How many older people are suddenly radical Trump or
| QAnon supporters?
| bserge wrote:
| Shitty healthcare systems, but they're not exactly hidden.
| People just choose to ignore how bad they really are.
| nradov wrote:
| Healthcare makes only a marginal difference. The Roman Empire
| managed to last for centuries with no healthcare "system" at
| all. Public sanitation, and access to safe food and water,
| are far more important than quality of health care.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| No. It was complacency.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Whether it caused the downfall of the Roman Empire or not, is
| lead poisoining (used for water pipes and cooking vessels) the
| oldest example of technical debt?
|
| Edit: just realized technical debt is a software engineering
| term. I still think it's a great analogy for how large
| unmaintained codebases rot over time.
| tgv wrote:
| Is it technical debt if you don't know, much less understand
| the problem?
| mkl95 wrote:
| Good question.
|
| Romans studied lead poisoning to some extent. Their word for
| lead poisoning was saturnism [1]. Which makes me think they
| either didn't know any better, or they found out so late that
| they could not afford to replace their lead with a safer
| material.
|
| [1] https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-
| historic...
| yesenadam wrote:
| > Romans studied lead poisoning to some extent. Their word
| for lead poisoning was saturnism[1]
|
| The linked article, surprisingly, doesn't seem to give any
| support at all for either of those statements.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Here's another one that focuses a bit more on Rome:
| https://culturacolectiva.com/history/plumbism-disease-
| that-m...
|
| > Known as plumbism (or saturnism in Latin as a reference
| both to lead and plumb, but also to the god Saturn known
| to be mentally unbalanced and aggressive), this was a
| very well-known disease by ancient alchemists though it
| wasn't really attributed to Roman emperors.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The Romans also used Lead as a sweetener, and that arguably
| contributed more towards the lead intake than the pipes and
| cooking vessels. Those last two things certainly contributed,
| but the direct use of Lead as a food additive was way worse and
| often overlooked.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My understanding is that this is a much bigger issue, because
| the leaded pipes would calcify naturally, forming a barrier
| coating between the lead and water
| tdeck wrote:
| The article you linked says this:
|
| > The ancient Romans, who had few sweeteners besides honey,
| would boil must (grape juice) in lead pots to produce a
| reduced sugar syrup called defrutum, concentrated again into
| sapa
|
| But the article about defrutum adds more context:
|
| > However, the use of leaden cookware, though popular, was
| not the general standard of use. Copper cookware was used far
| more generally and no indication exists as to how often sapa
| was added or in what quantity. There is not, however,
| scholarly agreement on the circumstances and quantity of lead
| in these ancient Roman condiments.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| True, and I included 'arguably'. There isn't a consensus on
| this and I admit my perspective only casual.
| goto11 wrote:
| The article posit "erratic rulers" as a possible cause for the
| downfall of the Roman Empire. As examples of such erratic rules
| it mention Claudius, Caligula and Nero. The problem with this
| theory is that the fall (if we take 476 AD as the date) happened
| about 400 years after these rulers.
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The article shows that many emperors from ~0-200AD had a lead
| rich diet, and I'm guessing the paper stopped when it did
| because sources suffered during the Crisis of the Third
| Century.
|
| If the early emperors ate a lot of lead, it's reasonable to
| expect many of the later ones continued doing so, which could
| have played a role in the downfall.
| goto11 wrote:
| Couldn't you just as well conclude that lead-eating emperors
| lead an empire to expand and prosper for centuries?
| jcranmer wrote:
| They're only off by as long as the US or any of its antecedent
| colonies have been around. That's not a big deal, right?
| science4sail wrote:
| 210 Reasons for decline of Roman Empire:
| https://courses.washington.edu/rome250/gallery/ROME%20250/21...
|
| I guess that strengthens the case for #121 (for now).
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