Comment by peeters | Hacker News Reader

Comment by peeters | Hacker News Reader

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> Roman Empire’s use of lead lowered IQ levels across Europe, study finds

I'm not a fan of this phrasing. None of the findings had anything to do with measuring IQ levels in ancient Europe. They were about measuring historical levels of lead, which they then just plugged into modern models to presume some levels of cognitive effects.

A study that was actually able to measure cognitive disparities and correlate them with measured levels of lead would have been extremely interesting, but this is not that. Everything other than the measurements of historical lead levels seems to be fluff.

This would kind of be like saying "massive asteroid strike 100m years ago lead to cataclysmic tsunami, study finds" but then not showing any evidence of a tsunami, just evidence that it struck an ocean and the inference that that would have caused a tsunami. It might be a reasonable inference, it's just not as interesting as the title would make it seem.

Edit: I should qualify, I'm not trying to say that "they did the math"-style papers don't have value, just that the phrasing in how they are presented matters to me. If the phrasing was more like "Use of lead in Roman Empire would have lowered IQ levels across Europe, study finds" I would have no issue with it.

Could also happen that all the advances in hygiene and infrastructure and logistics during the Roman empire had a more positive impact on IQ than the negative effect of lead. Not starving while growing up does wonders for the brain.

Plenty of people starved...just not (in their better centuries) the better-off Romans.

For (presumed) IQ benefits, I'd focus more on the hygiene, and the relatively disease-free drinking water which all those lead pipes & lead-lined aqueducts provided. (Plus the sewers.) There were lots of nasty diseases you could catch by drinking the water in ancient cities. And at scale, "lead lowered IQ" isn't much different to "unable to think well while ill", to "higher mortality makes education a poorer investment".

That a very reductive view. Data shows that during the Roman empire, people moved on mass from hill forts into the flatlands (presumably giving better acess to agroculture, trade and water). We also see far more material culture, and not just for rich people. Huge amount of just common consumer goods, and this even streches far beyond the borders of the empire itself. Population also increased during this time.

> Population also increased during this time

you mean after the slaughters?

Yes, many places part of the empire for 100s, sometimes even 1000 years.

And conquest is of course always bad. But that wasn't the point you were making.

You were talking as if there was constant large scale starvation in Rome, and there for the most part wasn't. You point that only rich Roman elites didn't regularly starve isn't really true. And its certainty not true in comparison to other places in the ancient world.

What did the Romans ever do for us?

I dont know who "us" is, but probably roads and writing?

I think reference is in order... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ

Ohhh, haha thanks, now it makes sense who "us" is ;)

Well obviously the roads, the roads go without saying, don't they?

Those aren't roman inventions…

Roman-built roads and the spread of Latin were tremendously important. Noone said they were invented by them.

Yes they did… they edited their comment after I responded and could no longer edit mine.

You just looking for an argument? Its important people know writing and roads weren’t invented by the romans. They are given way too much credit by Americans with imperial ambitions.

I mean, I guess the aqueduct was a nice thing?!

Probably not in the parts of Europe outside the Roman Empire and definitely not in the peoples that the Romans killed all of.

Fully agree, @peeters - as I've mentioned elsewhere in these comments, there's a long-standing trend of trying to identify the one true cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. Each explanation falls short - it's just a complicated thing (and heck, the empire didn't really fall, it just shifted east.)

Or as some wag once put it, the empire then continued to decline and fall for another 1000 years.

Inclined to agree with this. It didn't fall, just sort of withered into other cultural ideologies and empires.

Some of it was also fucking bananas which didn't survive enlightenment.

Something a lot of people don't realise is that the last of the "Roman" states (that called themselves Roman) didn't cease until about 50 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic (xref the fall of Constantinople).

You can also count the Holy Roman Empire that was dissolved in 1806.

No you can't, dispite the name the "Holy Roman Empire" was nether Holy or Roman.

It considered it's self the successor in the same way that russia considers itself to be the 3rd Rome.

This is one of the problems with modern academia. It's hard to extrapolate these things

Oh it's really easy to extrapolate stuff. But perhaps they shouldn't. A lot of papers I've seen recently have wild romantic extrapolations based on cherry picked correlations.

Some of the social sciences are terrible at this. A former partner was a researcher in one of what I now consider to be less respectable fields and she would come up with a feely conclusion and fit the data to it and publish it. Wanted me to co-author one with her and do the statistical analysis. Told her I don't want to be on Retraction Watch.

That could explain how the lead poisoning crowd took over. No, there won't be any retractions, you will be "educated" that you are stupid, "anti science", and too stupid to understand the newly discovered "fact".

Yeah if you don't toe the line of the more senior people in the speciality, next thing you know you're outcast from your institution and no one will talk to you.

This is why I do mathematics. Most of it is impossible to argue against once there's a solid proof :)

(also everyone is really nice in the field!)

The guardian article is not academia.

Would have implies they didn't use lead buy if they had it would have lowered IQs

May have lowered IQs based on extrapolation and modern studies

Might be a better way to put it

Both are valid ways of using "would have", in this case I'm using it as the past tense of "will have". But I appreciate the ambiguity it creates.

> We use "would have" as the past tense form of will have:

>> I phoned at six o'clock. I knew he would have got home by then.

Note the difference between this and:

> I phoned at six o'clock. I knew he was home by then.

Which implies first-hand knowledge of his location. The first only signals a logical conclusion.

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/english-gram...

It is perfectly reasonable to assume lead would affect people 2000 years ago the same way it does today. Human biology hasn't changed.

1. Lactose Tolerance: The ability to digest lactose as adults evolved in populations with a history of dairy farming, such as those in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.

2. Disease Resistance: Genetic adaptations to diseases like malaria (e.g., sickle cell trait) have become more common in certain regions.

3. Skin Pigmentation: Variations in skin color have continued to adapt to UV exposure in different regions, influenced by migration and interbreeding.

4. Height and Physique: Improved nutrition and health care have led to an increase in average height and changes in body composition in many populations.

5. Wisdom Teeth: A gradual decrease in jaw size has made wisdom teeth less functional, and they are increasingly absent in some populations.

6. Brain Function: While the brain's size and structure remain unchanged, shifts in cognitive demands and education have influenced how we use our brains.

-- https://let-me-ChatGPT-that-for-you/search?q=how+has+human+b...

And none of that is at all relevant to how lead affects the human brain and so is completely useless. You should have asked it "Would lead lower IQ in humans 2000 years ago the same way it does today?" This is what DeepSeekv3 says:

Yes, lead exposure would have likely had similar detrimental effects on human cognition and IQ 2000 years ago as it does today. Lead is a neurotoxin that interferes with the development and function of the brain, particularly in children. Its harmful effects on intelligence, behavior, and overall health are well-documented in modern studies, and these effects would have been the same in the past, even if they were not understood at the time.

No more useless than blind blanket assumptions, which was the point.

> Yes, lead exposure would have likely had similar detrimental effects on human cognition and IQ 2000 years ago as it does today. ...these effects would have been the same in the past...

I challenge you to consider that details matter, and one of those details is that the recent past through today has seen significantly more exposure to airborne lead than existed 2,000 years ago.

What a horrible reference. I hope this doesn’t become a thing.

I thought so too, at first.

Then I realized this is better than common daily occurrences like, "it's perfectly reasonable to assume human biology does not change in 2000 years".

At least this is amusing!

The effect that lead has on the human brain has not changed.

> models to presume some levels of cognitive effects.

Not "presume", "deduce" or "conclude".

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