
Neanderthal teeth reveal lead exposure and difficult winters - privong
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/10/neanderthal-teeth-reveal-lead-exposure-and-difficult-winters/
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RugnirViking
Very interesting that they were getting lead exposure like that from living in
caves near lead deposits or drinking contaminated water. It perhaps says
something about human history that we always seem to end up in that exact
situation over and over again - from the roman empire to modern USA, all have
had problems with lead exposure.

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Nasrudith
Lead is perfectly natrual - early pewter itself can give enough to be outright
lethal. Nature is full of well hidden dangers.

It brings to mind a thing about ancients - occasionally they would build a
city in a location that would be very bad if they had sufficient geology to
know that say a massive eruption would eventually kill them all or the whole
shelf will eventually fall off into the sea. Their neighbors come across the
their utter destruction and wonder what they did to anger the gods into
eradicating them completely or if they already had horrible relations figured
they totally deserved it. It brings to mind a dark joke that the gods really
hate bad geology in settlement location.

I am reminded of one Minioan city and what archaeological evidence suggested -
usually one villainizes their foes. They had their evil downplayed - there was
evidence they would demand adolescent boys and girls for human sacrifice from
their subjects. A gas erruption killed many of them shortly before an invading
army of their revolting subjects arrived and turned what would have probably
been a battle they would lose to one they won by showing up.

Compared to the minotaur myth where a king's love of beauty of a bull he
promised to sacrifice in honor of a god who gave him the sign of his worth to
rule they are downright sympathetic and even their crimes were justified and
made tragic even with the added monster and bestiality.

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RugnirViking
Is there such a thing as good geology when it comes to this sort of thing? Or
are we essentially makeing a tradeoff here that lead etc is less bad than say
in the next valley where its full of arsenic etc?

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Nasrudith
Good geology would be knowing to stay away from the tell tale danger signs and
recognize the area as best unbuilt. Given that it would also require knowing
all about the chemistry and dangers which may be extraordinarily subtle and
they likely weren't even at protochemistry it is essentially life being
grossly unfair to them.

Even Dwarf Fortress fans would object to colorless odorless gas occasionally
killing entire settlements with no way to detect it. Especially when one
counter - torches for burning methane can itself lead to carbon monoxide
another toxic one in addition to explosion risk. To add insult to injury radon
also kills and doesn't cause tiring or burn and the player can actually know
that these exist. Those sort of impossible to know before dangers happened a
lot - like early days of radiation research. Let alone retrospect foreseeables
like "should have known inhaling any smoke would be bad for your lungs".

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undersuit
>Even Dwarf Fortress fans would object to colorless odorless gas occasionally
killing entire settlements with no way to detect it.

I'm sorry, but airlocks and decontamination chambers are a key to any
fortress. :)

