‘What did the Romans ever do for us’ – apart from starting large scale climate change and pollution?

 

‘It was mining, smelting and de-forestation on a large scale however that identify the scale and impact of the Romanisation of Gallia Narbonensis as a real and substantial contributor to the start of global warming and climate change.’

 

When Pliny the Elder sat composing his Naturalis Historia - at some point in the second half of the first century CE - he very likely considered the range and even the impact of the rural and urban industrialisation he had seen throughout the then empire. By the publication of his first volume in 77CE, it would not have been possible to travel and view any Roman town, colony or city without noticing the distinct smell of smoke, possibly hanging in low lying mists, that grew ever stronger and more widespread as one closed in on the gates of the community.

With Roman imperial expansion came economic growth and, with growth, came increased demand for goods to improve standards of living, materials to build more homes, a need for skilled and unskilled workers – both freemen and slaves – and an ever-increasing desire for minerals. Put all of this together and we can see the Roman Empire from at least 150 BCE onwards, contributing to localised and regional levels of pollution on a scale that had never been seen before – eclipsing the small scale Celtic industries and impacting on climate change.

Before his death in the eruption at Vesuvius in 79 CE ended the life of one of Rome’s greatest commentators, Pliny the Elder was a widely travelled commentator on the history and development of Rome.  One of the numerous provinces that we know Pliny visited was Gallia Narbonensis – what we would refer to as the South of France today. (1) Pliny described Gallia Narbonensis in this way in his Nauralis Historia:

‘In the cultivation of the soil, the manners and civilisation of the inhabitants, and the extent of its wealth, it is surpassed by none of the provinces, and, in short, might be more truthfully described as a part of Italy than as a province.’ (2)

Because of its similarities to Italy, Gallia Narbonensis grew into a Roman province at an alarmingly fast rate – partly because it was already known to be an attractive area in which to live or work and partly because one had to travel through it in order to reach Hispania or move north into central and northern Gaul. But it was also well known for the widespread and cultured Celtic population that post-dated the Phoenician and Greek merchants’ communities along the coast that had preceded the arrival of the Romans. Most of all, it was the climate, rivers, mountains and rivers that made this part of France as attractive then as it is now – and hidden beneath the surface, its rich abundance of minerals.

The gradual annexation and control over the tribes of southern Gaul took time – between 120BCE and the accession of Augustus, there was a constant influx and increase in investment, administrative control and growth that enabled Roman industrial development to spread. (3) In addition, there were no real wars that disrupted life in this province – the Gaul’s, once they accepted that they had no alternative, seemed to have tried to make the most of new found economic opportunity as much as anyone. Economic expansion saw a growth in house building – numerous new towns were established and with them came demands for housing, triumphal arches, theatres, temples, baths, vast aqueducts and of course roads. All of these projects needed investment, labour and stone hence the rapid and widescale spread of stone mining throughout southern France. But it was not just mining for stone that saw huge swathes of forest cut and burned - building sites and quarries for all sorts of materials such as clay, iron ore and silver were opened up across the region. Local families vied with merchants from Rome to buy up land, invest in road building and housing companies and skilled engineers, draftsmen, stone masons and potters flooded into the region – profits were huge as the number of luxurious villas and towns such as Glanum testify. (5)

But it was not just domestic consumption of these materials within Narbonensis that was impressive – Rome too was growing and had a voracious demand for bricks from the hundreds of kilns established alongside the River Rhone to be transported to Aix - millions of them - granite for large scale projects around the forum also came from the Pyrenees and was moved by barges to Marseilles to transport to Rome,  mussels came from mussel farms in Aiges-Mortes, wheat from the huge granaries at Barbegal, wines from all over the region were transported in huge amounts to Rome and especially from Arelate (modern day Arles). The production of Garum or fish sauce was another huge domestic product that was able to build on existing Celtic production to satisfy consumption across the Roman empire.

 

But economic expansion and demand for luxury brought with-it the first great age of global pollution -

It was mining, smelting and de-forestation on a large scale however that identify the scale and impact of the Romanisation of Gallia Narbonensis as a real and substantial contributor to the start of global warming and climate change.

The most recent evidence for this claim comes from the work led by Noemi Silva-Sanchez and Xose-Lois Armada. Published the findings of their research in Environmental Archaeology in March 2023, demonstrates a direct and irrefutable link between Roman mining and metallurgy and archaeological evidence of widescale pollution. (6) Work on peat and ice to identify past peaks and troughs in pollution is not new and the 1960’s and 1970’s saw a lot pf work such as by Ruhling and Tyler in 1968. But using modern scientific approaches, much more has become clear. In 89 cores taken from deep in the ice, peat and lakes in Greenland, it was possible to see that 81 of these ‘showed a discernible characteristic lead peak in Roman times.’ So, as the Roman surveyors identified deposits of lead, iron ore, tin copper and silver so they instructed mining to begin and with the deforestation of trees came huge releases of carbon-dioxide and other gases from the rudimentary but effective smelting processes. In time, one could move from location to location purely by looking out for the next large black plumes of smoke arising from the next mine or quarry. We can only imagine the amount of death and disease that accompanied working in these fumes amongst the gasses or smelting and pouring the results into lead, copper and silver bars for transport back to the treasury in Rome. The Romans also mined for the incredible toxic mercury deposits found across Europe – using hundreds of thousands of expendable slaves to do the work.

 

Smaller scale smelting and kilns were found outside every community or any size in order to provide free iron ingots or to fire huge quantities of ceramics and pottery – all of which contributed to increased pollution levels along side the much larger industrial wastelands created by the Romans in their two main boom periods.

Smaller scale smelting and kilns were found outside every community or any size in order to provide free iron ingots or to fire huge quantities of ceramics and pottery – all of which contributed to increased pollution levels along side the much larger industrial wastelands created by the Romans in their two main boom periods.

 

 

According to the evidence, it was the 1st and 2nd centuries CE that saw the largest quantities of mineral extraction and especially lead. The demand for lead piping for water in the new housing developments across the empire meant that lead bars were highly prized to be melted down and shaped into gutters and pipes but this also released massive quantities of pollution into the atmosphere – the effects of which we see ever more obviously in our changing climate.  We can chart some of this development through Imperial orders and statutes granting mining rights and through the travels and observations of Pliny and Strabo amongst others who comment on the mines and industrial work that they saw. In Spain mining was widespread and indiscriminate, in Britan lead was mined extensively and in France it was the mountains of the Massif Central and Pyrenees that provided important centres of lead, iron and silver using a workforce taken from across Gallia Narbonensis, such as at Etang-Mort. (7)

 

Lead and Antimony levels the ice cores on Mont Blanc from research undertaken in during 2018 and 2019 by DRI. (8)

An international team from the Desert Research Institute in Nevada USA produced a report on levels of Roamn era lead and antimony pollution stored in the ice of Mont Blanc. The substantial peaks in pollution were found to directly correlate to periods of economic boom in the Roman Republic and during the Imperial age.

However, it is not just the upper atmosphere. Mining for these metals saw pollution levels in rivers and lakes rise as water was a prime source of power and the soils for miles around these sites still show vastly increased levels of toxins from lead, iron and copper than normally found and these of course feed into the French food chains.

Finally, those of us who are lucky enough to walk an original stretch of a Roman road or drive along the former route of the Roamn road, should remember that roads were often diverted to run close by a mining or quarrying centre so that the thousands of wagons needed for transport could use the local highways and byways. Toxin levels alongside Roman roads are often higher too because of their proximity to the pollution of soils from the presence of smelting in the Roman period. With demand coming from across an ever-expanding Empire in the 2nd century CE, so transportation routes were often blocked by long convoys of wagons moving large volumes of materials from one province to another. It is estimated that annual production levels could have seen as much as 15,000 tonnes of copper, 80,000 tonnes of lead and 10,000 tonnes of Zinc being smelted into ingots and transported to and from Rome and the evidence lays all around us in lakes in Sweden, marshes in France and peat deposits in the United Kingdom.

 

More work will reveal more evidence but for now, with climate change and global warming forever in out modern-day psyche and part of our lives, we should remember that the impact of the Roman era on humanity spans far more than just studies in imperialism and culture – but also how they impacted upon our planet as much as we have done.

 

Modern impression of the industrialisation of the Roman Empire.