Photo from open sources
According to a press release on Phys.org, an international group scientists examined the glaciers of Greenland, finding traces of lead emissions left here from 1100 to ours and to 800 of our era.
As the researchers found, lead got here with winds from European lead-silver developments dating back to Ancient Greece, then the Roman Empire, during the heyday of which widely used as lead itself (of which nothing was done, starting from water pipes and ending with casing ships), and the silver from which the coin was minted, dishes were made, works of art were created and jewelry (note that argentum, which we call silver, smelted again from lead ores).
The most amazing thing, scientists say, is ice the cover of Greenland fulfilled in this case the role of archival “manuscripts”, which are easy to follow the stages of development European society of that time since the age of lead sediment correlates well with periods of prosperity and decline of those great European powers.
For example, maximum lead pollution occurs in the first centuries. AD (the highest prosperity of the Roman Empire), but in times famous wars and epidemics the concentration of heavy metals in Arctic ice is the smallest. The same picture can be seen in the last hundred years of the existence of Greater Rome. So with a big accurately determine all this (“read” the history of ancient Europe) scientists had to make more than 21 thousand measurements, but thanks To this they embraced a vast period of almost 2 thousand years.
By the way, many modern readers may have logical question: why did the ancient Greeks and Romans use there is so much lead in everyday life that is, in general, harmful to the human body? It is true, but deadly hazardous effects of heavy metals on human internal organs people discovered much later, but because the ancients undividedly and fearlessly poisoned themselves with lead, creating from it not only water pipes, but also dishes, because of which their digestive and central nervous system. However, this is a topic for the article. another plan …
Greenland
