> “One possibility is that they were looking for caves with running water inside,” Muotri said. “Caves contain lead, so they were all contaminated.
I'm not buying this claim that all caves contain lead (throughout Europe, at least). Europe is not a wonderland for lead mining. Southern Missouri (USA) historically produced a significant amount of the world's lead supply, but no early hominids evolved there.
And I don't understand the figure early in the article. It seems to show that Homo sapiens evolved with quite a lot of lead exposure, while H. neanderthalis did not - so they didn't need our "immunity" to lead.
Finally,
> “If all humans have this newer mutation in all corners of the world, very strong genetic pressure must have selected for it in our species.”
Or, it was present in the bottleneck die-off of H. sapiens 800kya, and hasn't mutated since. The added complexity in organoids in the lab is interesting, but the mere presence of a single base pair in a gene doesn't guarantee that it is genetically important.
> “The FOXP2 gene is identical between us and the Neanderthals, but it's how the gene is regulated by NOVA1 that likely contributes to language differences.”
That at least does underline the importance of this genetic difference.
Conceivable. And not just that far back. It's been thought that Beethoven's deafness was largely the result of the way wine was stored back in the 18th century.
And what did we learn from history? "The federal government banned the use of leaded pipe and solder in new plumbing systems in 1986, but many remaining pipe networks in older cities and homes predate the policy; the EPA estimates there are still 6 to 10 million lead service lines across the country." - https://greenyplace.com/when-did-they-stop-using-lead-pipes-...
It was known long ago that lead (and other) water pipes develop a passivation layer due to minerals in the water, and the water is adjusted to do so if it doesn't naturally, but everyone knows about the case of Flint, Michigan where they didn't.
Yeah those types of second order problems are really tough in low-intelligence bureaucracies. 1/ Lead is good for pipes!, 2/ lead is bad for health!, 3/ ok we've ripped out half the pipes but it turns out that when we control the mineral mix in the water we can mitigate the lead contamination from pipes that are hard to replace, 4/ let's do something cheaper and not do any due diligence and forget that 3 was done some time ago.
5/ because it's only poor blacks anyway.
Yes, in Hamburg, Germany there are a lot of lead pipes still. When moving there I got to find this out by a letter from the government, that I should know that I have many times over the limit drinking water which I was consuming. I was always telling others to drink the safe tap water ...
Funny. If you say that kind of thing in some of the German subreddits they'll run you out with pitchforks - "Germany has the best water in the world!" is the refrain.
Norway checking in, moved here from the US, and have family in Germany. Norway water is definitely my preference.
"Preference" is not safest.
Why did you tell others to drink tap water if you haven’t verified it’s safe?
Because in the first world it is reasonable to believe that the tap water in major metropolitan areas is potable.
That sounds unusual. Was that warning letter about lead in the lines from the public utility ( https://www.hamburgwasser.de ), or the pipes internal to the house?
Avgas still has lead in it unfortunately.
It is also not used by many airplanes.
I think it's ridiculous that landlords are able to rent properties that will give tenants lead poisoning as long as they provide a warning. I have a feeling that many people think tbe warning is just for legal liability and don't realize that their landlord is knowingly poisoning them.
Nobody is being "actively" poisoned except perhaps the consumers of your rhetoric.
The lead develops a layer that keeps it from dissolving into water (much like aluminum develops an oxide layer) and won't hurt anyone as long as the water source doesn't pull a Flint. This is true for pipes both in houses and city pipes upstream.
Is it more dangerous than not, yes. But it's not really an "active" problem.
Unfortunately, "lead in the water" is not a boolean, and is extremely dependent on things the landlord doesn't control - especially the chemistry of the municipal water supply. But our legal system makes it easiest to sue the landlord.
Sure, you could rip out all the old metal pipes and replace them with (say) PVC. Even handwaving the expense and issues of that - did you just replace "lead" with "microplastics"?
Most likely leaded gasoline from the rise of cars is our bariatric les fascism.
Meaningful in-home water filtration increasingly seems pretty much mandatory.
The degree of water filtration often requires about having to learn about re-mineralizing.
> The degree of water filtration often requires about having to learn about re-mineralizing.
You can drink distilled water all day every day, you get all the minerals you'd ever need from food. Remineralization post-filters are purely for better taste (subjective of course).
I ate salty products like crazy after year or two on pure water. My doctor told me to drink mineral water or tap water instead of pure water — the problem is gone.
This is the internet. It is global. In-home water filtration is a minority situation in the US.
We gotta clone some neanderthals to really figure out!
(No I don't mean lead poison them, I mine figure out what they are like without lead.)
I was taught by parents to not pour hot water to the kettle, because the water heater might have lead pipes and cold water was omitting them. I wonder was it the case...
It’s more that hot water will leech more lead from whatever lines do you have, including in the water heater itself. The biggest concern would generally be lead solder. There’s no reason you would have lead lines for hot water and copper lines for cold.
Also the hot water sits in a tank (in most homes) full of scale and may just taste worse.
That might have been true locally, but you need to know the actual lead levels (which can change with infrastructure changes) in cold and hot water to know for sure.
I replaced my hot water heater and supply pipes myself, so it has no more lead than the cold. They're currently tearing up my street to replace the lead in supply lines, so... everything will hopefully improve here.
What seems off to me is that lead (at that level) must have been a factor in the natural environment for a very long time, so it's strange for a tolerance mutation to be recent.
Incredible. How did they know to search for this relationship! So many dependencies.
Now, how can I get my family tested for lead exposure? I worry about the old silverware…
Seems implausible that the entire taxonomic family of Homidae would be exposed to neurotoxic levels of lead because of cave water. I'm not convinced. Something is off, here.
Somewhat coincidentally I am reading "The Language Puzzle" and the author puts forward the theory that based on the tool evidence left behind that the language development of Neanderthals was as much as they could do with their brain physiology and environment, i.e. there was no improvement in stone tools over their entire history versus the other human population evidence we have at close to the same time and that the improvement in stone tools in other populations had to be verbally communicated. There of course is the bias in the evidence we have may not be fully representative and this theory is not mutually exclusive with the genetic argument in the article.
Agreed. Lead main source in nature is galena, which is relatively nontoxic. It rarely occurs in metallic form.
It is ok to handle galena if you don't eat with your fingers. But it is highly toxic if swallowed or inhaled.
Do most people just not know how to write an interrogative sentence anymore? It is wild to me how often these fragments of questions appear on the front page.
I use this form sometimes myself in a dialogue, as it fits that context. But as an isolated story title, I invariably end up reading the whole sentence several times, trying to parse it.
I think Hacker news removes "filler" words from headlines, which is why it is so weirdly phrased. The original headline is different.
HN doesn’t do it but it does have a character limit: go to the submission form and paste the original title (“Did Lead Limit Brain and Language Development in Neanderthals and Other Extinct Hominids?”) and you’ll see too long.
People lazily remove words until it fits instead of reworking the whole thing sometimes.
HN does actually have automatic text filters to remove "extraneous" words from titles, even when they do fit. People have complained that the filters are too naive and sometimes destroy necessary context but for whatever reason the mods consider it necessary.
Oh, TIL. I guess in this case it couldn’t have been since you can’t submit if too long but I was unaware.
Could be one or the other, or both, but the filter's definitely there.
Fair warning HN also automatically replaces submitted links with canonical links despite most canoncial links pointing to the original domain for SEO purposes. There is no warning or feedback for any of this, you're just expected to notice and edit your post after the fact.
You can edit the title after submission
I personally would have tried:
Did lead limit extinct hominid and Neanderthal brain development and language?
The completely pointless and oftentime confusing capitalization doesn't help, as usual.
> In the late 1950s through the 1970s Herbert Needleman and Clair Cameron Patterson did research trying to prove lead's toxicity to humans. In the 1980s Needleman was falsely accused of scientific misconduct by lead industry associates
> In 1991, together with Claire Ernhart, Scarr was involved as an expert witness on behalf of the lead industry in the lawsuit United States v. Sharon Steel Corp., on the opposite side of Herbert Needleman who was testifying for the U.S. Justice Department owing to his research on the relationship between lead exposure and IQ.[0]
> When the trial was declared open to the public, Scarr initially refused to come and later when she was persuaded she constantly refused to answer questions. Scarr received money from the lead industry for consulting services which creates a conflict of interest.
> Scarr retired to Hawaii in 1997, where she learned scuba diving, even obtaining a rescue diver certification. She also traveled "a lot, especially on cruise ships"
Jesus Christ.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Scarr