Matera & Lead in the Roman Empire

After visiting Matera, I learned that it’s one of the oldest cities in the world. It has caves that date back to 7000 BC.  Our tour guide showed us the city, it has a lower level that he told us used to be nearly uninhabited when he was a child, and that when he was a kid him and a few friends had mega-hide & seek because they could use all the houses.  Nowadays, the city population is increasing, and has 60,000 people, and will be the Cultural Center of Europe.

            As I walked through the city, myself and a few others in our group witnessed the creation of a giant cardboard castle and I was honored that a few friends and I were called by the people in the city to help lift the whole thing to add more cardboard and make it taller! I was so honored and excited and got to see it rise from the inside. Everyone was so welcoming and wasn’t rude even though I don’t know Italian.  In Matera too, this was the first-time people didn’t assume that I was American and immediately spoke English and I had to ask people to speak English to me.  

            Yesterday I arrived in Amalfi, and began reading an interesting article concerning lead in the Roman Empire, and what’s interesting is that the Romans had a sewer and piping system, but it seems that their water had very high quantities of lead and some have speculated if this caused the fall of the Roman Empire.  I thought this was interesting and I wonder if there wasn’t lead in the water if the Roman Empire would’ve been more economically prosperous or even lasted longer if it weren’t for the diseases that came from lead poisoning.