• Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
    77·
    6 days ago

    I miss PugJesus and their context/sources lol it’s hard to find anything off a Startpage search atm outside of the basic lead-made-the-Roman-empire-fall theory.

    Speculating here - it’s possible that the ancient Romans who knew were about as equally numbered as today, but also like today, stubbornly willful ignorance and/or economic interests outweighed the voices calling for its cessation?

    It could also be logistics - communications being fragmented and/or unable to source materials to replace the infrastructure rather than simply “not knowing”

    • nagaram@piefed.socialEnglish
      65·
      5 days ago

      As with all things, its complicated.

      The romans knew that those who worked in lead mines or were lead smiths suffered tons of problems and died early because of their occupation.

      The dangers of lead were never a mystery.

      But they also knew that it takes more than simply touching lead to get sick. So they knew their lead pipes were fine since it was a low pressure gravity system unlike our modern system that is pressurized. Lead pipes in a pressurized environment actually mixes with the lead and causes problems.

      And water logistics are NECESSARY to keep a city like Rome alive. So lead smiths were needed because lead is CRAZY USEFUL for all things precise and plumbing related.

      But, lead also famously has a sweet smell when formed into lead acetate. And romans love sweet wines. So they’d boil down grapes and berries in lead pots to make a lead acetate sweetener. This theyd mix with wines to enhance them. Something they generally knew was bad but who knows. I like to think of it as the ancient roman equivalent of smoking. Yes objectively bad, but sometimes you need an extra sweet wine to take the edge off.

      I’ll give you better sources later. I think I got this from Mary Beards “SPQR” which is a must read. Not chronological, but fuck chronology. Where my thematics gang at!

      • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        6 days ago

        You are awesome thank you for sharing all this context 😄

        That all makes a lot of sense, there’s definitely similar concepts today where it’s understood that the dose makes the poison, so to speak.

        I’ll have to check out that book it sounds fascinating, for sure

      • RaphaelSchmitz@feddit.orgEnglish
        5·
        5 days ago

        Difficult to imagine there wasn’t a group of proto-magats with “I should have the right to drink lead if I want it! I thought this was a civitas liber! I’m not gonna live in fear, not gonna let those liberales tell me excrementum.”

      • Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        6 days ago

        Love Mary Beard! She’s the host/presenter of a number of Roman documentaries that can be found on YouTube, if anyone else is interested.

        • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          28·
          6 days ago

          He made a post saying that he was stepping away. I don’t want to speak for him, but the main thing seemed to be frustration with some activity caps implemented on the server he had moved his communities to, and knowing that it would be a ton of work to move them all again.

          • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
            9·
            5 days ago

            Averaging 41 28 posts per day?

            I barely I even LOOK at 41 28 posts per day.

            I appreciate the effort to load this place up with content but that couldn’t have been easy

            EDIT: I did a better math

    • phcorcoran@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      5 days ago

      The comparison that I find most relatable is that lead was the plastic of their day. It was a very useful, plentiful and cheap material with mostly known health effects. Alternatives exist but they aren’t as useful, plentiful and cheap as lead/plastic

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        One reason lead was so plentiful is that a lot of the silver ore in Europe contains a hundred times more lead than silver by weight and the lead has a lower melting point, so the quest for silver produced an enormous amount of lead as a byproduct.

  • Zephyr@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    25·
    5 days ago

    I mean we are poisoning the world and ourselves today and the vast majority of people don’t seem to mind enough to stop it. I imagine it was like that.

  • dubs@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    23·
    5 days ago

    How many things do we know that are bad for us, and simply ignore the consequences?

    Off the top of my head:

    • gasoline/smog
    • coal
    • microplastics
    • alcohol
    • tobacco
    • excessive sugar
  • Vicinus@piefed.zipEnglish
    19·
    5 days ago

    Some good responses so far. I want to add an addition component.

    My recollection is that the Romans knew lead was poisonous and worked to manage direct exposure. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, all the lead smithing put lead into the air, which they couldn’t detect, and that was the cause of their lead poisoning.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    6 days ago

    Yeah some of them wrote and complained about it but they still didn’t do anything about it systemically. The wealthy few could somewhat avoid it if they were knowledgable enough but the workers in their slums couldn’t do jackshit about it. Nor could the slaves mining it (obviously)