8bitsrule 3 hours ago

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-...

  • j45 an hour ago

    Meaningful in-home water filtration increasingly seems pretty much mandatory.

    The degree of water filtration often requires about having to learn about re-mineralizing.

steveBK123 6 hours ago

Just like Huel!

  • MountDoom 2 hours ago

    I get your joke, but the thesis here isn't that Neanderthals were exposed to more lead. Instead, the claim is that we might have evolved a mutation that protects our brain against lead to some extent.

  • andrewflnr 5 hours ago

    What, did they have a lead contamination issue?

    • ch4s3 2 hours ago

      Any time you collect a bunch of plants, dehydrate them, and pulverize them you’ll end up with a powdered concentration of whatever was in the plants. Since many plants can fix lead and because lead is everywhere you’ll get a little lead. It won’t be much, barely more than 1000x lower than the safe level, but some. Also cadmium probably.

  • zoklet-enjoyer 4 hours ago

    I really wanted to like Huel. I like the idea of their meals, like chilli, but I didn't like it. Their Soylent type drink wasn't good either. Soylent 1.5 was the best.

JoelMcCracken 2 hours ago

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.

  • bawolff 2 hours ago

    I think Hacker news removes "filler" words from headlines, which is why it is so weirdly phrased. The original headline is different.

    • floam 2 hours ago

      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.

      • floam 2 hours ago

        I personally would have tried:

            Did lead limit extinct hominid and Neanderthal brain development and language?
      • krapp 2 hours ago

        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.

        • floam 2 hours ago

          Oh, TIL. I guess in this case it couldn’t have been since you can’t submit if too long but I was unaware.

          • krapp 2 hours ago

            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.

        • andsoitis an hour ago

          You can edit the title after submission

  • rplnt 21 minutes ago

    The completely pointless and oftentime confusing capitalization doesn't help, as usual.