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March 27, 2015
[Well this is a challenge. A little short story embedded in a work of non-fiction with characters we have no particular interest in. Let’s just say this is the story of a man from a family devoted to lead -- finding it, extracting it, working it -- who goes off looking for new sources and finally ends up in Sardinia]
p86 ...an alert-looking fellow with a plaited woolen cap came up to me and we understood each other pretty well. I showed him that you could beat that stuff [lead he has just produced from a vein nearby] with a hammer: in fact, right there and then I found a hammer and a curbstone and showed him how easy it is to fashion it into slabs and sheets: then I explained to him that with the sheets, welding them on one side with a red-hot iron, you could make pipes. I told him that wooden pipes... leak and rot; I explained to him that bronze pipes are hard to make and when they are used for drinking water cause stomach trouble, and that lead pipes last forever and can be joined together very easily. [I wish this was true. Lead pipes are too soft to last forever and we are having to replace some lead drains in my building.] Putting on a solemn face, I also took a random shot and explained to him that with a sheet of lead you can also line coffins for the dead, so they don’t grow worms but become dry and thin, and so the soul too is not dispersed, which is a fine advantage; and still with lead you can cast small funeral statues, not shiny like bronze, but in fact a bit dark, a bit subdued, as is suitable to objects of mourning. Since I saw that these matters interested him greatly, I explained that, if one goes beyond appearances, lead is actually the metal of death: because it brings death, because its weight is a desire to fall, and to fall is a property of corpses, because its very color is dulled-dead, because it is the metal of the planet Tuisto, [Saturn. See Here ] which is the slowest of the planets, that is, the planet of the dead. I also tald him that, in my opinion, lead is tired, perhaps tired of transforming itself and that it does not want to transform itself anymore: the ashes of who knows how many other elements full of life, which thousands upon thousands of years ago were burned in their own fire...
[I’m guessing the coastal town where he waits to sail is Marseille. Bacu Abis is near Carbonia on the southwest coast of Sardinia. Until recently, it was a celebrated mining area. ]
“Lead is a soft, malleable and heavy post-transition metal. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed to air. Lead has a shiny chrome-silver luster when it is melted into a liquid. It is also the heaviest non-radioactive element.”
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“If ingested, lead is poisonous to animals and humans, damaging the nervous system and causing brain disorders. Excessive lead also causes blood disorders in mammals. Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates both in soft tissues and the bones. Lead poisoning has been documented from ancient Rome, ancient Greece, and ancient China.”
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“Lead has been commonly used for thousands of years because it is widespread, easy to extract and easy to work with. It is highly malleable as well as easy to smelt. Metallic lead beads dating back to 6400 BCE have been found in Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey.[34] In the early Bronze Age, lead was used with antimony and arsenic.[35]
The largest preindustrial producer of lead was the Roman economy, with an estimated annual output of 80,000 tonnes, which was typically won as a by-product of extensive silver smelting.[33][36][37]Roman mining activities occurred in Central Europe, Roman Britain, the Balkans, Greece, Asia Minor and Hispania which alone accounted for 40% of world production.[33]
Roman lead pipes often bore the insignia of Roman emperors (see Roman lead pipe inscriptions). Lead plumbing in the Latin West may have been continued beyond the age of Theoderic the Great into the medieval period.[38] Many Roman "pigs" (ingots) of lead figure in Derbyshire lead mining history and in the history of the industry in other English centers. The Romans also used lead in molten form to secure iron pins that held together large limestone blocks in certain monumental buildings.[39] In alchemy, lead was thought to be the oldest metal and was associated with the planet Saturn. Alchemists accordingly used Saturn's symbol (the scythe, ♄) to refer to lead.[40]”
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“At current use rates, the supply of lead is estimated to run out in 42 years.[52] Environmental analyst Lester Brown has suggested lead could run out within 18 years based on an extrapolation of 2% growth per year...[53]” -Wiki
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