
Lead pollution in ancient ice cores may track rise and fall of medieval kings - sohkamyung
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/lead-pollution-ancient-ice-cores-may-track-rise-and-fall-medieval-kings
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akhilpotla
They claim that the graph in the post shows a good correlation with the
succession of new kings and taxes paid on smelting silver and lead ore with
the lead in the ice core, but the graph shows a weak correlation at best.
However, the graph is on a log scale, so it might be hard to see.

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chrisco255
The 1200s was the end of the Medieval Warm Period, the rise of the Bubonic
Plague, also associated with a number of famines that wiped out huge portions
of the European population. It was a time of great upheaval, so correlating to
taxes is just a weird metric. It's interesting to note the decline in lead but
I would assume this to be true of any period which led to population decline.

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kibwen
> the team used a laser to carve 120-micron slivers of ice

I want to know more about this process. The kerf of a laser cutter tends to be
around 1000 microns, so are they just throwing away 90% of their material or
is their laser something special?

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misiti3780
Im confused what is so interesting about this. The Greenland Ice Core Project
tracked ancient pollution in snow 20+ years ago, and they even discovered
interesting spikes all the way back to the Roman Empire

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_core_project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_core_project)

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TheGallopedHigh
Different data source and as stated in the article they use a different and
more accurate technique. I guess that’s the interest.

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thedudeabides5
Does anyone know where to find the longest time series of this kind of data?
Would be awesome to see the ebbs and flows against the long term trend of
industrialization.

