What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us? Made Us Sicker, Apparently

Roman urbanization in Britain caused rampant disease and malnutrition

The Roman Empire is arguably the most impressive culture in human history. The Romans conquered and subdued several powerful civilizations, introduced technological innovations, and significantly altered the course of history. The story usually goes something like this: the Romans came in, they brought trade, marble columns, heated floors, straight roads, and “civilized” the barbaric locals.

But while the Romans may have brought in new technology and organization, they didn’t exactly bring a lot of health with them.

For several years, researchers have discussed whether the inhabitants of Britain were better off after the Roman “upgrade”. Now, a team of researchers led by Rebecca Pitt at the University of Reading, UK, analyzed the skeletons of 646 individuals and their answer is a resounding “no.” The Roman “civilizing” coincided with a severe decline in public health.

The Toxic Cost of “Civilization”

Pitt looked at 372 non-adult skeletons (mostly infants and toddlers) and 274 adult females from 24 different sites across England, spanning the Iron Age (4th century BC to 1st century AD) and the Roman occupation (1st to 4th centuries AD).

The results are horrifying.

In the Iron Age, only about 26% of children showed signs of skeletal pathology — lesions or deformities indicating disease or severe stress. That is a rough baseline, for sure. Today’s numbers are far lower, thankfully.

But fast forward from the Iron Age to the Roman era, specifically in urban centers, and that number skyrockets. In Roman cities, a staggering 61.5% of children showed signs of disease.

The figures are even more striking for stunting. In the Iron Age, only 3.1% of children were significantly stunted. The vast majority of them got most of the nutrients they required. But under Roman occupation, the number exploded to over 50%.

Half of the children in these “advanced” cities were physically failing to grow because their environment was so toxic and their nutrition so poor.

The Irony of Urbanization

The Romans didn’t intend to make people sick. They probably didn’t even realize they were doing it. Instead, the catastrophic decline in health was largely an unintended consequence of the Roman lifestyle itself. The new overlords arrived with “civilized” ideas about how to live, eat, and build cities, never realizing that their advanced technology and medical advice were actually poisoning the population.

The first problem came from cities themselves. Romans packed people into administrative centers. But this increased the rates of bone infection and respiratory disease due to overcrowding and pollution.

Then there is the plumbing.

We still marvel at Roman aqueducts and pipes, but we often forget what they were made of. Lead. Lead was everywhere in the Roman world, from the water pipes to the cookware and even inside children’s toys. In the Iron Age, you drank water from a stream or a well. In a Roman city, you drank water coming through a lead pipe.

The research points out that even the poorest margins of urban society were unknowingly ingesting lead, which is devastating for child development. Lead poisoning disrupts metabolic pathways, making it harder for the body to absorb nutrients, which likely contributed to the explosion of rickets and other deficiency diseases found in the urban skeletons.

RelatedPosts

DNA study shows 4,000 year-old mummies are half brothers
Ancient Rome’s lead air pollution may have dropped average IQ by up to 3 points
Israeli archaeologists uncover roman-period glass factory underpinning trade throughout the empire
A novel website lets you become a space archaeologist — just by looking at pictures

But perhaps the most surprising impact came from how the Romans changed diets.

How to Raise a Baby, the Roman Way

One of the saddest findings is that Roman mothers likely malnourished their babies because they were trying to follow the best medical advice of the time. The study highlights that in Roman London, mothers adopted a “cereal-rich weaning diet”. This aligned with the recommendations of Roman gynecologist Soranus, who wrote a famous medical text advising on childcare. Soranus had many good ideas, but this wasn’t one of them.

The Iron Age locals (and rural rebels who ignored Roman trends) stuck to weaning babies their way. The diets had more varied nutrient sources, including freshwater protein. The Romanized mothers, trying to be “modern” and listen to the doctors, “unwittingly restricted nutritional resources,” leading to the growth stunting and metabolic diseases found in the skeletons.

This stress didn’t just affect kids; it wrecked the mothers, too.

Urban Roman women had a pathology prevalence of 81.1%, compared to 62.1% for Iron Age women. They had significantly higher rates of “dental enamel hypoplasia” — lines on their teeth that act like tree rings, recording periods of severe physical stress during childhood. These women grew up sick, lived sick, and raised sick children.

Paradoxical History

The final bit of evidence comes from rural, non-Romanized populations. The isolated, rural poor largely ignored the Romans. Some small farms and villages, far from the bustling administrative centers, maintained their previous health trends. Out in the sticks, people lived as they always had. In cities, people started crowding up and drinking from lead pipes. The sticks got the better end of it.

The health damage was generational, the researchers conclude. The Romans brought better sanitation, but this couldn’t overcome the overcrowding of cities. They also brought some healthcare, but this was likely restricted to the rich few. After all, the economic situation imposed by the Romans was certainly exploitative.

The Romans occupied England for nearly 400 years. For the administrators and the elite, it might have been a time of wine and baths. But for the average mother and child in a Roman town, it was a grind of sickness and struggle that their “barbarian” ancestors never had to endure.

Without wanting it, the Romans created a ruthless health system that left the population vulnerable to these conditions, while the “perks” of civilization (like plumbing and imported grain) finished the job.

It is a sobering reminder that “development” often comes with a heavy biological price tag, especially in the early days. The stress documented in these ancient skeletons reflects the same inequalities we see today. The “Urban Roman” profile of high disease and malnutrition looks distressingly similar to the health profiles of impoverished, overcrowded communities in the modern world.

The study was published in the journal Antiquity.