The Ancient Greeks Were Polluting The Planet Over 5,000 Years Ago
24 February 2025
By MICHELLE STARR
The famous Lavrion silver mines of Ancient Greece were operational as far back as 5,000 years ago. (ankarb/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
We humans are a messy bunch. Where we dwell, there accumulates evidence of our nesting. We have fossilized garbage piles dating back more than 100,000 years. It's a whole thing.
Putting aside its potential for harm, anthropogenic pollution can be a useful archaeological tool. We can see when people started using certain technologies, and trace the evolution of culture based on the unthinking imprint left behind thousands of years after the people who made it.
It's in such traces that archaeologists from Germany and Greece have now found the oldest known evidence of lead pollution from human activity – and even linked its rise to the emergence and establishment of advanced monetized society in ancient Greece.
"Because lead was released during the production of silver, among other things, proof of increasing lead concentrations in the environment is, at the same time, an important indicator of socioeconomic change," says paleoscientist Andreas Koutsodendris of Heidelberg University in Germany.
The silver tetradrachm, bearing an Athenian owl, was first minted from around 510 BCE. (oversnap/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-ancient-greeks-were-polluting-the-planet-over-5000-years-ago
