[HN Gopher] Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall o...
___________________________________________________________________
Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman
Empire
Author : dbrereton
Score : 105 points
Date : 2022-06-13 16:26 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (talesoftimesforgotten.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (talesoftimesforgotten.com)
| dqpb wrote:
| What does the "Fall of Rome" actually mean? It's not like
| everyone died or disappeared. They just stopped being ruled by a
| particular government.
| hansworst wrote:
| I'm guessing it means that things went from one single
| government with lots of power ruling over a large population to
| many governments ruling smaller groups of people.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| A lot of people died - starved or got killed by disease,
| pillagers or such like. The population of Italy and Greece post
| the Empire was probably only half of what it was during the
| Roman times.
|
| But even beyond that, the "fall" of Rome (the city) meant that
| its one million former inhabitants now largely became rural
| subsistence farmers rather than
| artisans/craftsmen/smiths/teachers in a city with theatres,
| race tracks, running fresh water, spas and food trucks. If the
| US underwent the same sort of change, you might call it
| "fallen" too...
| ztrww wrote:
| Most of this occurred close 100 hundreds years later after
| the fall of Rome when the Eastern Roman Empire tried to
| reconquer Italy the inhabitants of which had really noticed
| that the empire had fallen in 476. And anyway the population
| of Rome hadn't been close to a million for hundreds of years,
| it had been declining for centuries.
| bombcar wrote:
| We can speak of the "Fall of Detroit" even though Detroit
| continues to exist and hasn't disappeared, but it is certainly
| no longer in its heyday.
| drewcoo wrote:
| It means "you should check Wikipedia."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi...
| dang wrote:
| That's pretty good snark, but please don't be snarky on HN -
| it's a kind of collective poisoning in its own right.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dqpb wrote:
| Ok
|
| > the fall of Rome was the loss of central political control
| in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire
| failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was
| divided into several successor polities.
|
| So it's exactly what I said it was.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Bret Devereaux recently went into a lot of detail on this in
| his blog [0]. Short answer: some things stayed the same (lots
| of sub-communities didn't see much difference), other things
| distinctly got worse (lots of people died). The process was
| also different in different areas. In general, in Western
| Europe, a lot of regions went from an urban-oriented
| centralized economy to a more decentralized one, causing big
| problems for the cities that no longer had the administrative
| prowess to support themselves.
|
| [0] https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-
| and-f...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Lots of people died and disappeared, whole cities were
| abandoned, those that weren't often had a tenth of their
| previous populations, people receded to subsistence
| agriculture, and literacy went to almost zero. If you took an
| interest in a subject and read a few books, you could be the
| worlds foremost expert on it. This was most prevalent in the
| west.
|
| Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an industrial
| revolution a thousand years early.
| dqpb wrote:
| > Rome was just a few sparks away from triggering an
| industrial revolution a thousand years early
|
| That's a pretty amazing idea.
| notahacker wrote:
| I remember reading a very entertaining story as a kid by
| John Christopher (typically an author of juvenile sf) in
| which basically the opposite happened (the protagonists are
| transported to an alternative 1981 in which the Roman
| Empire survived in stable form basically unchanged, and
| they're able to transform its fortunes with longbows and
| pendulums... although helping the underground Pope
| legitimise Christianity as a religion doesn't go quite as
| well as expected. Special props to the author for having
| the imagination to conceive that the pendulum could be used
| as a torture instrument!
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I was surprised how nice their homes were. Had nicer villas than
| most people's homes.
| Psyladine wrote:
| While not a proper historian I find Dan Carlin's observations
| very interesting, especially him comparing how, historically
| speaking, the middle class of their period had a lifestyle
| quite envious to our own, more akin to how we imagine the "idle
| rich" today (servants for all menial tasks, expansive homes,
| lackadaisical lifestyles and high quality education for
| personal pursuits). Underlaid of course by the same conceits we
| apply to the modern rich: they live on the backs of millions
| who, comparatively, are effectively slaves.
|
| https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-26-blitz-...
| ztrww wrote:
| Historically the middle class in the past is the modern rich
| of today. It consisted of the bourgeoisie and the well
| educated elite who still had to work for their living (i.e.
| business owners, lawyers etc.) it wasn't much more than a few
| percent pf the total population. Prior to the 20th century
| describing any person earning an 'average' income as middle
| class wouldn't make much sense.
| [deleted]
| ugl wrote:
| The infloor and in-wall heating systems are just recently being
| re-introduced! 2000+ years later. Even small buildings in the
| wilds of england are found with hypocaust tiles. I just saw a
| video introducing a brand-new underfloor heating system using
| hot air! The not leaking liquid was a big selling point.
|
| Everything old is new again.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocaust
| varjag wrote:
| It is less widely known that the fall of Soviet Union was caused
| by widespread use of asbestos in roof shingles.
| hef19898 wrote:
| But only if combined with lack of those on the roof of
| Chernobyls turbine hall. Those are directly related, everybody
| knows this.
| comrh wrote:
| One thing I really got out of the History of Rome podcast by Mike
| Duncan is if anyone tells you there was ONE cause of the fall of
| Rome, they're full of crap.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| If the hypothesis is correct, that lead significantly decreased
| roman mental capabilities, then this might be the root cause,
| for everything else. Stupid people make stupid decisions.
|
| But wether the effect is significant enough, I am not qualified
| to judge.
| krylon wrote:
| I had a great history teacher in school who would use every
| opportunity (and there were many, obviously) to drive home this
| point. Not just Rome: most, if not all, major historical events
| and developments are driven by multiple causes.
| hef19898 wrote:
| As one of the greatest history channels on Youtube once said:
| "History isn't hapoening in a vaccuum". And they are right.
| freemint wrote:
| The first moon orbiting of a human happened in a vacuum. I
| hope more history happens in a vacuum.
| em-bee wrote:
| i agree with your sentiment, but on the other hand, space
| isn't a pure vaccum, so technically even history in space
| doesn't happen in a vacuum.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not all vacuums are created equal it seems! Love your
| comment so!
| RajT88 wrote:
| What I find recently is that the folks suggesting Rome fell
| because of ONE cause, that one cause tends to be some political
| fringe talking point. So there's some other clues in there.
| [deleted]
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I would even extend the point to applying to the failure or
| success of all complex systems.
| narag wrote:
| That's very reasonable. But there was a slow collapse of the
| economy that is an intermediate cause in the chain of events
| that is central to the fall.
|
| You can speculate what caused that collapse, that in turn
| caused the fall and there are also many causes to consider, but
| again, there is one intermediate cause that is Christianism.
| The religion altered several aspects of the economy: slavery,
| commerce and lending.
|
| Now you can again speculate about what make them think it was a
| good idea to adopt Christianism as official religion. If a
| previous crisis existed that shook the foundations of the
| empire. Anyway, it seems the solution solved nothing.
|
| So xxx --> Christianism --> Economy --> Fall
| joefourier wrote:
| The eastern half of the empire was just as Christian and
| didn't collapse for another thousand years, so you can't
| really point to Christianity as the cause.
|
| I don't know why people obsess over finding a cause for the
| fall of Rome when it was one of the world's longest lasting
| empires. We should be more interested in how it endured for
| over a millennia (nearly two thousand years if you count the
| Republic) whereas most continent-spanning empires fell apart
| in a handful of centuries or even decades.
| narag wrote:
| _The eastern half of the empire was just as Christian and
| didn't collapse for another thousand years_
|
| The division of the empire itself was a consequence of the
| commerce collapsing. The fall of Rome is another one.
| cassepipe wrote:
| That's actually quite a good remark. The most compelling
| theory I have read on the fall of the western part of the
| empire was that a mode of production based a land based
| elite that relied on slavery came to have a lot of
| limitations. The war machine kept it going as new land
| could be given to fighting soldiers (that would become less
| of a threat when settled) and fueled the economy with ever
| more slave.
|
| When Rome invaded the hellenistic region, there was already
| an established economy that relied a lot less on big
| domains worked by slaves and that region managed to keep it
| that way. Thus when the slave mode of production came to a
| dead end, it was the part of the empire that relied
| massively on it that collapsed.
|
| Another interesting point was that the adoption of
| Christianity made the elite even bigger with the whole
| Church apparatus now living the life and putting even more
| pressure on the system.
|
| I wish I would find the sources again.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If you blame Christianity, what about all of Constantine's
| other major changes? Was it the Tetrarchy? The formation of
| Constantinople? The restructuring of the government or
| military? The introduction of a new currency? All monumental
| changes that had about as much of an effect as the change of
| religious policy.
|
| I'm no fan of Christianity, but the claim that it was central
| to the fall always comes off as somewhat lazy. Religion
| needed reform, and maybe they could have done it in a
| different manner which would have led to a more stable West
| but it just as likely could have destroyed the East.
| narag wrote:
| _If you blame Christianity, what about all of Constantine
| 's other major changes?_
|
| It's the Economy, Steve. In particular, if you discourage
| commerce, you're playing with fire in an empire with such
| an extension.
|
| _I 'm no fan of Christianity, but the claim that it was
| central to the fall always comes off as somewhat lazy._
|
| I thought I'd added enough nuance. The three aspects I
| mentioned are not trivial and can be connected directly. In
| fact, it's not something that just occured to me, there's
| abundant literature on them and are considered most
| probable causes by a lot of scolars.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > The religion altered several aspects of the economy:
| slavery, commerce and lending.
|
| It does seem that the western half of the empire was more
| dependent on slavery. But Christianity wasn't the only factor
| in that. With fewer conquests there were fewer slaves to
| take.
| dralley wrote:
| And if you really want to boil it down to a single reason, the
| best candidate would be "becoming militarily dependent on hired
| mercenaries and then not paying them" rather than something
| more interesting
| paganel wrote:
| It's also how the Byzantine Empire went into its downwards
| trajectory starting with the late 1000s. In fact, it was a
| little more complicated, as the Empire had to resort to using
| mercenaries because its _theme_ system had been basically
| broken into pieces by the Empire oligarchy and by the Church,
| so Byzantium having to resort to mercenaries in order to
| defend itself was mostly, by that time, a consequence of said
| oligarchy and Byzantine Church doing their thing against the
| small Byzantine tax-payers.
|
| And before someone starts saying that the Roman Empire lived
| "through" the Byzantine Empire all the way to 1453 I have to
| say that from my point of view that is only valid until the
| late 6th-early 7th century, by the end of Heraclius's [1]
| reign the Byzantine Empire was a thing totally different
| compared to the Roman Empire.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclius
| mr_toad wrote:
| The later emperors were also reluctant to rely on armies
| commanded by native Byzantine generals, who had a long
| track record of usurpation.
| otter-rock wrote:
| I can agree that it ceased being the Roman Empire per se,
| but I don't see it as being that much different from the
| end of the Roman Kingdom or the Roman Republic. It's still
| a continuation.
| comrh wrote:
| I always thought favoring biological heirs was up there too.
| The Five Good Emperors were all adopted and some of the
| absolute worst leaders only got there through luck of birth.
| ricree wrote:
| Probably true, but it was so baked into the system that it
| was hard to escape. Even the five good emperors chose their
| successors via adoption, so on paper it was still direct
| inheritance. For Marcus Aurelius to pass over his son would
| have been a huge break from tradition.
|
| The best attempt to escape this was Diocletian's tetrarchy,
| but that just led to yet another civil war.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That sounds a lot like "had cardiac arrest" though. The magic
| is in the "why" of "not paying them".
| trashtester wrote:
| Another, related view is to look at how many was on the dole.
| During the late empire, around 20% of the population in Rome
| was effectively on welfare, getting food from the state.
|
| Instead of drafting these poeple into the empire, Rome
| recruited foreigners for the army, while the productivity of
| the domestic population kept going down. Eventually the
| state, needing to pay both the welfare receipients and the
| army, ran out of economic capacity to provide for both
| groups. Stopping the dole was if possible more dangerous
| short term than not paying the provicial armies, since the
| proletariat in Rome/Constantinople could riot instantly, and
| overthrow any emperor.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Wasn't the dole only implemented because land ownership had
| concentrated to a few extremely wealthy individuals? Only a
| few generations earlier, during the Second Punic War many
| landowners had either died or had their farms ruined to
| deny food to Hannibal, allowing the land to be bought at
| low prices.
| trashtester wrote:
| Combined with massive influx of slaves from Gaul and
| other places making latin farm laborers too expensive.
|
| Still, the effect is the same. A large proletariat with
| very little income demanding to be fed by the state. With
| significant political power, based on making up a large
| percentage of the population in the capital.
| ricree wrote:
| Is that actually a useful correlation? Subsidized grain was
| a very prominent feature of the early empire. I'd be
| surprised if the late empire had a significantly larger
| proportion on it.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I can see that happening. Thinking about Canada. The other
| day I calculated it would take 25 hours of work for the
| minimum wage worker to afford a weekend camping. And I think
| that's a pretty good indication we're pretty close collapse.
| Workers not being paid enough, and out of control inflation
| is how the soviet system collapsed.
| debesyla wrote:
| Isn't 25 work hours a really low amount of work? That's
| just a tiny bit more than 3 work days for whole weekend
| camping?
| est31 wrote:
| If the minimum wage worker had free housing, food,
| electricity, etc. your calculation would make sense.
| Generally if you are a minimum wage worker who is working
| full time, a large component of your disposable income
| goes into those things (living paycheck to paycheck).
|
| So having a disposable income at all is a luxury, even if
| it's 10% of your income. Assuming that 10% figure, you
| can multiply those 3 days by 1/10% = 10 and you get 30
| days of working for one weekend of camping. Not really
| great.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| That's actually a really interesting metric. Cost of living
| has really shot up in Canada while wages have stagnated.
| Everyone knows that housing has increased dramatically.
| This leads to less disposable income obviously. I'm 40 and
| grew up in Edmonton. Once or twice a year, as a kid and
| into my late 20s, my family and and/or I did a hotel type
| vacation in Banff or Jasper once a year, which seemed
| expensive at the time, and multiple times camping in the
| Rockies per year, which basically seemed free. My slightly
| more wealthy friends' parents had a cabin and boat.
|
| Now if I were to live in Edmonton again, I could probably
| still camp as if it were free but I appreciate your
| assessment that a minimum wage worked could not. Because I
| certainly could as a minimum wage worker back in the day.
| And I probably would never justify a domestic hotel type
| weekend or week long trip within Canada.
| verve_rat wrote:
| I'm in NZ, a few years ago a colleague and I would bitch
| to each other that we are in the top 10% of salary
| earners in the country, but we felt not that well off. We
| were worried about affording a house that wasn't a damp,
| drafty shit hole. But people in our position a generation
| or two ago were buying boats and beach houses.
|
| We have been getting fucked for a while now.
| eastbound wrote:
| I'll take the devil's position: Your are not owed by
| nature a footprint on the ground, or a weekend camping.
|
| Manille (Manila? Capital of Philippines) has 43079
| inhabitants per square kilometer (23sqm per person,
| including agriculture), China tries to do the same.
|
| The key is nature doesn't owe you democracy, and
| governments neither. We can store many people vertically
| if we remove their personality. What I mean is poverty
| doesn't make the system itself collapse, it can actually
| survive pretty far, even thrive while everyone is
| expunged.
|
| After all, USSR only collapsed in 1991, 69 years after
| Stalin took power, after killing probably 1/4 of its
| population in gulags.
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| My weekends camping rarely cost me more than $20.
|
| $1.50 on food per meal.
|
| $1 on camping gas or coal for the weekend.
|
| $200 of gear, but it will last me 20+ camping weekends.
|
| $0 on travel, because I'll be hiking.
| ssully wrote:
| It was a viral post from a few weeks back. From what I
| remember the main cost increase was because of gas
| prices.
| kodt wrote:
| You can hike to the campground from your home?
| hengri wrote:
| Do you think that average people throughout history had the
| means of going on weekend camping trips.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| IDK. Camping can be very cheap. I went on camping trips
| all the time as a teenager and I had almost no money.
| Unless by "camping" you are talking about towing a small
| mobile home into a paved "campground" with electricity,
| water, showers and bathrooms.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I think they were called "hunting / gathering" for most
| of human history.
|
| Heck, non-working pets (e.g. herd guardians, vermin
| control, etc.) were nearly unknown until relatively
| recently, because who had the wealth to feed a non-
| productive mouth?
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| It's more just what they had to do anytime they traveled
| longer than a day's distance. I'm sure that happened for
| pleasure, but a trip specifically to camp seems like
| something that is more relegated to the modern age where
| you can get to a destination easily without having to
| just camp along the way.
| dkarl wrote:
| I vaguely remember a magazine biography of an Italian
| scientist who lived near the mountains. In the summer, he
| liked to strike out on Friday afternoon with a hunk of
| bread and a hunk of cheese, think about scientific
| problems while he hiked around in the mountains, sleep
| under his jacket, and come home on Saturday or Sunday. In
| his location he didn't need any more material wealth to
| "go camping" than he needed to stay at home.
|
| It might be more the opposite, that only in relatively
| recent times have people been able to get away for a day
| or two without doing what we would call "camping." If you
| were a hunter-gatherer you'd grab a buddy (or not),
| invent some excuse like checking for game in the next
| valley, and rough it for a night or two. Now if you fuck
| off for a weekend you can check into a hotel or an
| AirBNB.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| The average person throughout history did not have a
| refrigerator or global trade. Therefore any decline in
| todays society is moot.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Based on what/ divided how? Purchasing a tent, utensils,
| backpack etc ie starting from scratch, or assuming
| everything already paid for and just 'real costs' ie food,
| tent-place (ground rent?)? Decathlon.fr or .co.uk prices
| can be pretty cheap, but I'm not sure where the costs
| start.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Based on Canadian Prices, a working guy would spend. And
| not even going very far from home.
|
| Gas $100
|
| Beer $50
|
| Cigs $15
|
| Ontario Park Campsite $59/night x 2 = $120
|
| Firewood 2 x $15 = $30
|
| Some basic sausages and food = $50
|
| Total $375
|
| Min Wage $15/hour. Hours of work = 25 hours
|
| Actually it would take more than 25 hours, because most
| likely that person does not live with Grandma and has
| shelter / food expenses. So might need to save up for a
| month, if not months.
| weaksauce wrote:
| this is for how many people? because camping trip fees
| are split usually. i assume 50 dollars in beer is not for
| one person in a weekend... when I was there right before
| the pandemic the beer didn't cost anywhere near that.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| One guy definitely can drink a case over a weekend. I
| dont think you hanged out with many working people. I
| think most would not bring a 12 pack, but a full case.
| But even if they did. Last I rember there was $10
| covinince charge for getting the campsite tickets online,
| which you would want to do. Because you will not drive
| out there without knowing you have a spot if you saved up
| for a camping trip.
| googlryas wrote:
| This has to be some kind of joke post. Or, you've never
| been camping. Or, more likely, you're just constructing
| scenarios to fit your perspective instead of being honest
| with yourself.
|
| - Cigarettes and beer are a necessary part of camping?
|
| - Not going far from home, but using ~23 liters of
| gas($50 @ 210/L) just to get there?
|
| - Staying at the most expensive camp site(AA fee
| schedule) in Ontario?
|
| - Paying for firewood instead of just collecting it?
|
| - Spending $25/person/day on food?
| stinkytaco wrote:
| I agree this is a troll, but I'd like to point out a few
| things:
|
| > - Not going far from home, but using ~23 liters of
| gas($50 @ 210/L) just to get there?
|
| Absolutely could see this. I live in the US, but the
| nearest spot I'd like to go camping is probably a $50
| round trip. And I'd like to camp in different places, so
| we're starting to look at $50 being entirely reasonable
| if I made a list of places I'd like to camp. Not every
| trip, but certainly within the realm of possibility.
|
| > - Paying for firewood instead of just collecting it?
|
| For what it's worth, this is not allowed in many parks.
|
| > - Spending $25/person/day on food?
|
| This doesn't sound insane in the context of a trip, even
| a camping trip. You'll probably buy some special meat to
| grill, marshmallows to roast, some trail mix and maybe
| stop for food on the way out or back. $25 isn't really
| that crazy when you're traveling.
| googlryas wrote:
| Even spending $50 in one direction on gas isn't insane
| for a weekend camping trip, a couple hours of highway
| driving at current prices, but I don't think anyone would
| consider that "not far from home" as OP stated.
|
| > For what it's worth, this is not allowed in many parks.
|
| Sure, but you don't need to camp in parks. That helps
| save on the $60/night fee as well.
|
| > You'll probably buy some special meat to grill,
| marshmallows to roast, some trail mix and maybe stop for
| food on the way out or back.
|
| According to OP it is just a "basic sausage", not even a
| special meat. I end up spending about $15/day on food and
| I just pack what I want with no thought to cost.
|
| I guess my point is...none of what OP described is
| completely unreasonable for a random person's camping
| trip. But it is completely unreasonable when using this
| camping trip as an example as to how a person making
| minimum wage can't even go camping without saving up for
| weeks.
|
| To me, this post reminds me exactly of things you see on
| reddit's antiwork sub, where people say something like
| "You can't live on minimum wage", and to prove it provide
| a breakdown of how much it would cost to rent a 2BR
| apartment downtown, $500/month clothing allowance,
| $400/mo car lease, things like that. Stuff that I don't
| even do for myself despite making closer to 7 figures
| than 5. I've never camped at a AA fee schedule spot,
| never spent $25/day on food(while camping), never drank
| $25 of beer per day(while camping), never bought
| cigarettes, etc...
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| For someone from the other side of the planet (former
| USSR), this list feels very weird. I can't imagine paying
| for a campsite (nobody here does, you just go wherever
| you want and take whatever place is available), or
| firewood (you can always find a dry tree trunk somewhere
| along the road, or there's a friend of a friend who will
| bring some from his own house).
|
| So although our minimum wages are absolutely atrocious by
| your standards (officially it's around $100 per month
| IIRC, but I haven't heard of anybody making below $200),
| half of this list doesn't apply, and the other half is
| cheaper by 5-20 times (a pack of cigs is ~$1 if I'm not
| mistaken, a liter of gasoline around 50 cents, etc).
| Considering all of this, we've been chugging along just
| fine... or not, actually. Braces yourselves, I guess.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > For someone from the other side of the planet
|
| I'm in North America and the list still feels very weird.
|
| Going camping at a premium campsite alone (e.g. not
| splitting the bill with friends) only to consume $50 of
| beer and $15 of cigarettes is kind of a hilarious
| definition of camping.
|
| FWIW, there are places where open camping is allowed in
| the Canada and the United States. The OP was using a
| specific car-camping site with reserved spots and
| amenities nearby.
| em-bee wrote:
| _Ontario Park Campsite $59 /night x 2 = $120_
|
| i have been to places where hotels are cheaper than that.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep, that sounds like a rate for a paved site with
| electrical, water, and sewer hookups.
|
| State park "primitive" campsite here is $15 max. That's
| still in the official campground area. If you hike into a
| state or national forest, it's free.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Take Caligula as an example. We all know him as the mad emperor
| who supposedly once declared war on Neptune, then ordered his
| soldiers to attack the sea and take seashells as booty. The
| problem is that this story and the others like it all come from
| extremely late, hostile sources such as the biography Life of
| Caligula by Gaius Suetonius Tranquilus (lived c. 69 - after c.
| 122 AD) and Roman History by Kassios Dion (lived c. 155 - c. 235
| AD).
|
| Actually, I think Caligula was more trolling than insane. Reading
| about him, reminds me not so much of insanity, as if a 4chan
| poster was suddenly given absolute power.
|
| It my view, he had the Roman Army march around collecting sea
| shells for the lulz.
|
| Absolute power can be its own madness apart from lead.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Basically when an emperor died he was either transformed into a
| god or demonized depending on which was more politically
| convenient to his successor. The truth seemed more like the
| emperors were quite similar in their cruelty and competence
| compared to the exaggerations of the surviving propaganda about
| them.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> demonized depending on which was more politically
| convenient to his successor_
|
| Didn't they straight up remove some people from historical
| records? [0]
|
| That's something that stuck with me when visiting the Pula
| Arena in Croatia; In there was plaque, as old as the
| colosseum, where a name was scratched out.
|
| Sadly the plaque didn't have any explanation with it, so I
| just assume that's a case of damnatio memoriae.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae#Ancient_Rome
| anyonecancode wrote:
| That's an interesting take -- and observing how some ultra-
| wealthy people today behave who aren't even emperors, just
| really rich -- seems plausible.
| bombcar wrote:
| The "make my horse a senator" has always seemed to be a clear
| insult to the Senate and not actually thinking the horse
| should serve.
|
| It's like voting in a cat as mayor, it's saying the job is so
| pointless an animal could do it.
| bitwize wrote:
| This was the pet theory of my chemistry professor in college.
| Having learned more about the Roman Empire, which didn't fall so
| much as shrank and withdrew to the east before being conquered by
| the Ottomans, I can look back and say "Yeah, I bet as a chemist
| he'd like to believe that."
| sk8terboi wrote:
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The Roman empire had long assimilated other cultures into a pan
| Roman identity. This is not a compelling reason, either.
| Contemporary explanations typically point to two main causes:
|
| * The split between the Eastern and western Roman empire caused
| the comparatively less wealthy Western empire to weaken
| considerably. Remember, the Eastern Roman Empire _didn 't_
| collapse and lasted well into the medieval era.
|
| * Lower crop yields due to changing climate patterns.
| Immigration is a symptom of this, lower yields prompting
| societies to migrate towards more productive areas.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Here is a counter-point[1] which finds high levels of lead
| toxicity in regular citizens. While this article seems to mostly
| be reasoning based on a literature review, the counterpoint uses
| analysis of roman skeletons.
|
| [1]: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/londinium-romans-
| blood-l...
| ineedasername wrote:
| That article ends with a note about the source of lead being
| indeterminate, with a chance the lead leached into human
| remains after burial.
|
| The issue also isn't just "did they have high lead levels?".
| The Roman empire around, with its lead pipes, for a long time.
| Why after hundreds of years would the lead of resulted in the
| downfall of Rome when Rome had flourished under the same lead-
| filled conditions previously?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Your article seems reasonably persuasive. The thing about the
| OP is that it's about what the Roman knew - but just any sort
| of pre-scientific knowledge of poisons tends to neglect
| questions around long term exposure.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The Mausoleum of Augustus was designed to hold the ashes of not
| only Augustus, but also his family/descendants. Maybe we could
| analyze those ashes for lead before jumping to any conclusions.
| Ekaros wrote:
| So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at
| timespan. Which was either decades or centuries... If system
| survived previously with mostly same things in place there is
| really no reason why such thing as lead pipes would be the cause
| of downfall part. By any reasonable conclusion the culprit in
| such case should be some disruptive innovation.
|
| In the end gradual natural degradation of system is much more
| reasonable.
| pvg wrote:
| This is more or less how more recent scholarship looks at
| complicated, long-term multi-modal sort of events and changes.
| _Fate of Rome_ is a fairly recent book that examines things
| like disease and climate change, for instance:
|
| https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166834/th...
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I don't know if that's a new viewpoint. I have been hearing
| about how the island and frequent disasters shaped Japan for
| as long as I remember.
| pvg wrote:
| It's definitely newer than Gibbon, in the case of the fall
| of the Roman empire.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Complex systems fail due to single causes exactly that way.
| First the system runs well; once the cause is introduced the
| system adapts so that the visible cost is minimal, but the
| adaptations are costly by themselves, and demand further
| adaptations; then the adaptation cycle runs for a while (that
| can be very long), until everything finally breaks down.
|
| It is very unlikely that the lead pipes that were there since
| the beginning would be such a cause, but the duration of the
| fall alone is not enough evidence that it wasn't caused by an
| immediate problem.
| cgriswald wrote:
| By way of example:
|
| You can use a caustic solution to unclog your pipes and it
| will work flawlessly, every time for an indefinite amount of
| time. Then, at some point, you'll have leaks due to glue
| being eaten away, PVC melting, or other damage.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| There are many things that contributed to the decline and
| collapse of the Roman Empire, natural degradation of a system
| ain't one of them.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > So often any of these single causal theories forget to look
| at timespan. Which was either decades or centuries...
|
| I don't think anyone is (was?) suggesting that someone replaced
| the pipes overnight and they were all dead the next morning,
| but rather that it was an extremely gradual process that after
| centuries of extending its implantation managed to reduce
| cognitive capabilities by a couple points, etc.
|
| The simple counterargument "lead use didn't increase" manages
| to kill such a theory, though.
| hinkley wrote:
| In software we (or at least I) often see situations where
| careful forethought put systems and checks in place that
| survive long after the responsible parties are gone, and it
| can be difficult to identify or accept that the project
| failed this year because Tom quit last year. There are too
| many forces arrayed against looking too closely at those
| situations, and once the wheels come off there's no longer a
| quorum to even rationally discuss such a thing, except
| amongst a few veterans having a beer and trying not to draw
| too much attention to themselves.
|
| If you idiot-proof something well enough, it can take a long
| time for the Universe to invent an idiot good enough to pull
| the whole thing down. We tend to look at Rome as one of the
| oldest well-documented cases of the power of logistics, so
| it's not outside of the realm of reason to suggest that a
| good process might survive even a generation or two before
| Chesterton's Fence wins out. But whether that's due to a loss
| of cleverness or just human nature is likely going to be hard
| to prove.
| namaria wrote:
| This line of publishing, much like nutritional science, is
| great for scientists. You can fudge data into flip flopping
| conclusions every couple of years. Infinite papers = tenure.
| swatcoder wrote:
| If you could earnestly profile even a few scientists who have
| personally flip-flopped their way to tenure like that, you'd
| surely have a red carpet welcome across a thousand podcasts
| and alt-media outlets
|
| Heck, maybe you could even get tenure somewhere if you
| happened to have academic creds of your own.
|
| Surely someone's done it? Are you familiar with any such
| profiles that you could share?
| namaria wrote:
| Are you really arguing that attacking the credibility of
| established scientists would be a viable way to prosper as
| a scientist?
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| How to get published: "Other authors are wrong."
|
| How not to get published: "The general consensus is right."
|
| So although individuals may not flip-flop constantly,
| fields as a whole do. Pick almost any topic in almost any
| field (especially humanities) and read papers 10-20 years
| apart. There's a constant cycle.
|
| The cycle becomes self reinforcing too, because now you can
| interact with previous criticisms ( _Dr. A said this, but
| Dr. B said he was wrong. In fact, A was correct because B
| neglected to consider..._ ).
| swatcoder wrote:
| Yes, earnestly contributing your effort towards a
| controversial or unsettled issue is a good way to publish
| and make progress in your career.
|
| And yes, some fields aren't able to perform the kind of
| reliable science of physics or chemistry, and so end up
| with a lot of papers that just _collectively_ oscillate
| around topics.
|
| But I have a hard time seeing how that's what the above
| commenter was suggesting.
| namaria wrote:
| Null hypothesis confirmation is not a good source of
| papers. Framing of problem is part of the craft. It's not
| a secret that there is a big reproducibility problem in
| science today. Why? Because problems and results are hand
| crafted to go from "let's disprove this... oh look I did
| it".
| lisper wrote:
| As someone who made their living publishing scientific
| papers for over a decade and amassed a track record that
| showed that I was pretty good at it, I can tell you from
| first hand experience that you are absolutely wrong about
| this.
|
| A much better approximation to the truth would be
| something like this:
|
| How not to get published: "Other authors are wrong."
|
| How to get published: "These specific other authors are
| right, and I have built upon the solid foundation laid by
| their brilliant work to do this other thing that may or
| may not have any actual utility or be of interest to
| anyone."
|
| [UPDATE] I actually did once publish a paper [1] that
| explicitly described (some of) the reasons that one of
| the then-leading theories in my field was wrong and how I
| thought it could be improved. It was more or less the
| beginning of the end of my career. I don't know if there
| was any causal relationship between these two events, but
| there was definitely a temporal one.
|
| And now that I reflect upon it, it wasn't even me who
| pointed out the problem, I was actually just citing Ralph
| Hartley who had pointed out the problems seven years
| earlier. He was, AFAICT, never heard from again either.
|
| [1] https://www.coursehero.com/file/60834776/tlapdf/
| namaria wrote:
| You don't attack established authors and frameworks. The
| low hanging fruit I was referencing is choosing something
| easy to disprove such as "eggs kill" or "roman empire
| fell because lead poisoning". After these results are
| published, the process is reversed. You disprove "eggs
| don't kill" or "lead poisoning had no bearing on the fall
| of roman empire". Ad infinitum.
| firebaze wrote:
| If we extended that line of thought into current times, what
| would that lead to?
| neap24 wrote:
| That's right, we all know the real cause for Rome's downfall was
| PM2.5
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| And geriatric politicians caused the fall of pax Americana by
| reacting too late for climate change. The wheel goes round.
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's funny, because the min age requirement in US politics is
| exactly a result of the study of disastrous young leaders in
| Rome.
|
| I wonder if the next empire will set an age range, like 35-65.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| In the U.S., lead was purposely added to food until 1988, so it's
| not like this is an exclusively ancient problem.
| AaronM wrote:
| That's a bold claim, do you have a source to back that up?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Lead arsenate was sprayed directly onto fruit (like apples)
| as an insecticide until the government revoked its
| authorization for use on food products in 1988.
|
| https://aapse.wildapricot.org/resources/Documents/AAPSE%20Pu.
| ..
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'd be interested too, the only thing I could find was the
| Lead Contamination Act of 1988 that was supposed to fight
| contaminated water coolers - pretty bizarre that this was
| actually a thing.
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/senate-
| bill/261...
| cryptoz wrote:
| No OP and I don't know about 1988, but lead pipes are still
| common in the US, either many states have them or all states
| do. Flint, MI has a plan to eliminate them this year, maybe.
|
| https://www.nrdc.org/lead-pipes-widespread-used-every-state
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Lead in pipes is only a problem if you have the wrong water
| chemistry. If the water is naturally or or treated to have
| the right pH then lead phosphates form and no lead leeches
| into the water.
|
| Still, I wouldn't want lead pipes.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Lead pipes are overblown as a risk. The bigger issue is
| putting criminally incompetent people in charge of water.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I think GP is referring to the ban on lead solder for tin
| cans that went into place in 1980.
|
| A bit of a stretch to call it intentionally adding lead to
| food, but in practice, not _that_ different.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Hm, didn't know about that. I wonder if that is why my mom
| never bought canned vegetables when I was a kid. She always
| bought frozen if she couldn't get fresh.
| Vladimof wrote:
| Frozen veggies still taste better to this day... maybe
| that was why.
| throwamon wrote:
| Thankfully we've since migrated to benign (/s) chemicals such
| as BPA and now BPF, BPS...
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/common-chemicals-in-p...
| bombcar wrote:
| It's interesting to note how many historical figures we really
| only know about through one or two sources, and those sources may
| be themselves biased.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| i don't believe anything that happened before hd video
| umeshunni wrote:
| Or after deep fakes
| londons_explore wrote:
| This article argues against the fall of the roman empire being
| caused by _severe_ lead poisoning.
|
| I would argue that it was more likely caused by widespread
| _minor_ lead poisoning. If everyone is more forgetful and learns
| slower, then that isn 't something that will be written in
| history books - the people themselves will just consider that
| 'normal'.
|
| Yet an empire of forgetful and slow-learning people won't be
| efficient. Every task will take more man-hours to achieve.
| Productivity will be lower. Accidents will happen more
| frequently. Crime will be higher. Strategic mistakes will be made
| by rulers, but will also be made by local rulers and individual
| families. "Should we plant corn or wheat this year?" - someone
| with intellect may read a book to discover the best crop or do a
| small scale trial, while someone with lead poisoning may just do
| the same as he did last year because it takes less mental effort.
| wozer wrote:
| This sounds a bit familiar...
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| > Strategic mistakes will be made by rulers, but will also be
| made by local rulers and individual families. "Should we plant
| corn or wheat this year?" - someone with intellect may read a
| book to discover the best crop or do a small scale trial, while
| someone with lead poisoning may just do the same as he did last
| year because it takes less mental effort.
|
| That seems to be transplanting modern education and growth
| norms onto a historic situation. Roman literacy was
| exceptionally high by the standards of ancient civilisation,
| which meant that one in ten people (probably not farmers) could
| read a book and doing the same as last year or as their
| ancestors was the rule rather than some sort of anomaly. People
| smart enough to make substantial changes would tend to be
| stopped far more by social structures than any minor slowdown
| to their cognitive abilities. In that sense, if lead poisoning
| had effects on modern information and intellect driven
| civilisations so small it took some pretty thorough statistical
| analysis against a backdrop of _rapid growth_ to convince us
| there was anything to the theory at all, it seems unlikely it
| could have made so much more difference to daily life in
| Ancient Rome. A cognitively impaired _Emperor_ could do a lot
| of damage, but the inherent flaw in the system was that sort of
| power also flowed to natural born idiots and every civilisation
| has those.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| The sad thing is that this point of view is just not accepted
| to be discussed e.g. in case of (covid) vaccines or other large
| scale innovations. I'm not a fan of intelligence measuring the
| potential of a society but just to give an idea of the non-
| linearities that can be in play here: A reduction of just 3 IQ
| points on average leads to a 10 fold decrease in people of IQs
| around 140.
| soco wrote:
| Looking at the worldwide reception of vaccines in general,
| one could argue the downfall has started way earlier.
| bonzini wrote:
| I'll bite, what the heck do COVID vaccines have to do with
| it?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Many vaccines have some of the side effects of infection.
|
| One such side effect (of both vaccine and disease) is minor
| neurological impairment. ie. you might not be able to
| remember where you parked your car last tuesday afterwards.
|
| The side effects are typically so minor and/or rare that
| the risk-benefit analysis strongly favours taking the
| vaccine over risking getting the infection.
|
| It's a controversial topic because humans are bad at
| judging small risks, and therefore there are groups of
| people 'scared' of the side effects of the vaccine and
| unconvinced by experts saying the risk-benefit is worth it.
| Some experts believe it is better to say "it is safe"
| rather than try to explain that there are in fact risks,
| but they're risks worth taking.
|
| Note: The above isn't covid specific - the same could be
| said of nearly any disease and vaccine.
| dllthomas wrote:
| "One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
| lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination
| of their C programs."
| layer8 wrote:
| Interestingly, at some point "N" began being used for zero,
| though apparently only some centuries after the fall:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals#Zero
| glouwbug wrote:
| Plebs would often go down to the water line and hold their ears
| up to Unix shells to see if they could hear the C
| leobg wrote:
| Beethoven, too, is suspected to have died from lead poisoning. In
| his case, too, a drinking cup for wine made of lead is the prime
| suspect.
| ugl wrote:
| Lead, or pewter [0]? Which was and still does sometimes contain
| lead which acidic drinks like wine can leach the Pb into
| solution.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewter
| verve_rat wrote:
| Tomatoes took a while to get popular in Europe because rich
| people where eating them off of pewter plates and the acid in
| the tomatoes leached the lead out and made them sick.
|
| It was the poor people without pewter plates that made
| tomatoes in Europe popular.
| airstrike wrote:
| Don't (virtually) all crystal "glasses" also contain lead?
| hgomersall wrote:
| Yeah, and most leach into the wine. It's less of an issue
| with wine glasses since the wine is not in them very long,
| but decanters are a cause for concern. Tbh, I refuse to use
| crystal glass at all. Cheaper stuff is simply safer.
| amelius wrote:
| Stupid question, but what if someone offers you a drink
| in it?
| hansoolo wrote:
| He couldn't have seen it coming
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Beethoven was deaf; are you thinking of Bach?
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