Ancient Lead Poisoning May Have Contributed to the Roman Empire’s Downfall (Paul Smaglik, Jan 6, 2025, Discover)
Now a team of researchers has provided hard evidence linking pollution and ancient intellect. They identified the level of pollutants in three ice cores that dated between 500 B.C.E. through 600 C.E. — the era spanning the rise of the Roman Republic through the fall of the Roman Empire. Then they compared those levels with how lead pollution affected the general public during its peak in the 1970s, before it was banned from gasoline.
The lead in the air in Roman times was enough to affect IQs then by about a third as much as in the late 1970s, when the U.S. Clean Air Act went into effect and about twice as much as in the early 2010s, according to the study.
“Elites and non-elites in cities and rural areas alike were affected by the background air pollution — no one could escape the health effects,” says McConnell.