Scientists solve mystery of plunge in IQ across Europe 2,000 years ago

Daily Mail (via MSN.com) ^ | 06 January 2025 | Xantha Leatham

[zeestephen]

It was one of the most technologically advanced empires in history...But the Romans may have been battling with cognitive decline due to pollution, according to a study...Researchers suggest that widespread lead pollution - caused by mining - lowered the IQ of essentially the entire European population at the time.

[one guy in new jersey]

Forget it. He’s rolling.

[cuz1961]

Must be some agenda behind their “research.”

\/

bingo

what else happened almost exactly 2000 years ago ?

The resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

this is just a veiled slight and insinuation against Christianity.

bank on it

.

[2nd Amendment]

The drop in IQs 2000 years ago was due to the rise of fake media

[Buttons12]

Lead was the prevailing theory, long ago.

[Wuli]

Speculation, not “evidence”.

The truth was really very simple. Rome was over extended and had given away its military prowess to the many non-romans recruited or enlisted into its forces. It did not take other lands long to copy Rome’s military advantages and to take advantage of how geographically overextended Rome was. That was not “pollution” it was size and demographics.

[Tell It Right]

My idea. And this is just food for thought. Just an idea. It may be that when the Roman Warming Period topped out around AD 300 (some say more like AD 200 or 250, either way not exactly 2,000 years ago but close), and we started cooling, it may be that the increased struggle for life left less time for "intellectual pursuits".

During the cooling periods we experience lower crop yields, less predictable precipitation, and more deaths by plague. Forget all the caterwauling the political class does about global warming. We should be glad we live in the Modern Warming Period. During the warm periods the cities become more populous because a relatively small acreage of land can feed a large city. During the cooling periods the cities depopulate because people have to spread out to grow crops (at least before modern transportation).

During the Modern Warm Period we've had a few major wars and atrocities because of people like Hitler and Stalin and Mao. During the cooling periods there are more atrocities because virtually everybody is Hitler -- even the most noble leaders will do anything it takes for his people to survive the harsher conditions of life in the cooling periods. My Anglo ancestors were kicked out of their homeland (Angli in modern day Germany) because the Germanic goths forced them out (call it our version of the Trail of Tears). We know this is because the Huns themselves migrated to where the Goths were, forcing the goths out.

Some say it was because the Dark Age cooling period reduced crop yields on the Huns, forcing them to try to find better land west. Likewise, later when many European descendent Americans were starving in the eastern portion of the U.S. during the Little Ice Age, it was all the more tempting to take over land and expand (more crop land = more food). During the same Little Ice Age Africa experienced mega-droughts. Thus it was more tempting for black leaders to take over neighboring lands to feed their own folks -- with the blacks living on those lands taken to the coasts and sold as slaves.

When stuff like that's going on during the cooling periods, there's not much idle time to be spent on philosophy and such. I can see why historians look at those times and assume, wrongly in my opinion, that IQ was lowered.

[2nd Amendment]

No,a pair of bears ate a German and a Czech. After examining the female bear they said “just as we thought, the Czech’s in the male!”

[PIF]

No need to mention the chaos that the invading hoards caused, or the fervent religiosity of the early Christians burning and destroying anything that did not fit the ‘Christian’ ethos at the time.

It had to be the water - contaminated with lead.

Which explains why I’m so idiotic and stupid: because I used to suck on lead enclosed toothpaste tubes >80 years ago. My IQ plunged from 145 to a hardly-worth-mentioning 125.

[PIF]

I’m talking about the memo put out to the mainstream media that it’s now okay to write science fiction and call it “science”.

—
Time magazine began that trend in the early 1970s.

[PIF]

Based on MY research, DRI is a leech using hard working tax payer’s money to conduct meaningless research for academics that can’t do REAL research.

—
DEI lowers IQ, and academics that can’t do REAL research because they have to comply with the lower IQ DEI standards - so they just make it up using fancy polysyllabic words that most do not understand outside of that particular field. The rest of us are supposed to just nod and say, “Yes, of course we understand and will follow the advice”.

[cuz1961]

the fervent religiosity of the early Christians burning and destroying anything that did not fit the ‘Christian’ ethos at the time.

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see what i mean ?

the chomo pagans want their sex and labor slaves back. thanks for proving my point PIF .

[GingisK]

...numbers of new ideas, inventions , patents, tech improvements etc...

Got a link to the Roman patent office?

[PIF]

I have no idea what you are talking about or what ‘point’ you are making.

[cuz1961]

cuz you are either a clueless mindless moron lefty

or just

intellectually dishonest

cuz everyone reading this thread knows exactly what i posted and the point i made that you confirmed

thank you for your effort

./-)

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

Comparing the ancient writings of St. Paul, Plato, Homer and others to modern news media, seems like we’re the ones with the mental knuckles dragging on the ground.

[cuz1961]

this is just a veiled slight and insinuation against Christianity.
cuz61

was my point

pif post 68
“the fervent religiosity of the early Christians burning and destroying anything that did not fit the ‘Christian’ ethos at the time.”

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repeated in case you are really just a moron and not just a liar.

[usurper]

"Ancient lead pollution stemmed largely from silver mining, when the lead-rich mineral galena was melted down to extract silver."

I understand they used the lead for their fresh water plumbing and even added it to wine as a sweetener. They had no idea it was toxic.

[Candor7]

Nah, it was the first advance of socialism that caused the drop in IQs across Europe 2000 years ago.We are now witnessing the same thing in America and are now whistling past the socialist grave yard.

You have to understand....people like AOC, Adam Schiff, Bernie Sanders...thay all suffer from low IQs and are converting AMerica into a low IQ nation via invasion of our SOuthern Border.

Same thing happened in Europe 2000 years ago in the Senate of Rome outwards.They got so socialistic that they had to abandon Great Britain and Scotland, allowing for the rise of King Arthur and his decedents.

[Gene Eric]

that might explain the 1600 year science deficit

[SMARTY]

Lead stoppers on wine casks and bottles. Read that in ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’