Ice from an Alpine glacier has revealed a remarkable timeline of Britain’s lead mining industry – complete with economic booms and busts relating to major events during the medieval period, from the assassination of Thomas Becket to the signing of the Magna Carta.

A study of a 72 metre long core bored from a glacier in the Swiss-Italian Alps shows how air pollution from lead in the 12th century was as bad then as it was during the industrial revolution.

Climate change scientists, historians and archaeologists from the universities of Nottingham, Harvard and Maine used ultra-high precision laser technology to analyse the 800-year-old ice, which they found “exactly maps the comings and goings of England’s kings”.

The research shows how traces of lead pollution from mines in the UK, in particular the Peak District, directly mirror historical “parchment roll” records of lead production in the region between 1170 and 1216.

They said “cutting edge atmospheric modelling” revealed the traces of lead in the ice were deposited in the Alps by the winds coming from the northwest, which carried dust and pollution from the UK.

Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Show all 9 1 /9 Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Soap bubble structures showing light interference colours and patterning Bubbles want to optimise space and minimise their surface area for a given volume of air. This unique phenomenon makes them a reliable, useful tool in many areas of research. In particular, materials science and 'packing' - how things fit together. Bubble walls drain under gravity, thin at the top, thick at the bottom and interferes with travelling lightwaves to create bands of colour. Black spots show the wall is too thin for interference colours, indicating the bubble is about to burst! - Kym Cox Kym Cox/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Upside down Jelly fish, Cassiopea xamachana Instead of swimming, this species spends its time pulsing up and down in the water. Their diet is sea plankton and their coloration comes from the uptake of algae in the water. Some jellyfish species have been documented eating plastics in the ocean. One theory suggests that algae grows on the plastic. As it breaks down, the algae creates the odor of dimethyl sulfide that attracts hungry animals. - Mary Anne Chilton Mary Anne Chilton/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Tribolium confusum. Confused flour beetle. This small beetle is a pest in stored grain and flour products. Scanning electron micrograph, coloured in Photoshop. - David Spears David Spears/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist NGC7000 North American Nebula The North America Nebula, NGC7000, is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, close to Deneb. The remarkable shape of the nebula resembles that of the continent of North America, complete with a prominent Gulf of Mexico. The Cygnus Wall, a term for the "Mexico and Central America part" of the North America Nebula, exhibits the most concentrated star formations in the nebula. - Dave Watson Dave Watson/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Safety Corona A safety pin is connected to a high tension AC generator. The pin ionizes the air around it. When the electrons fall back on an atom, the excess energy is emitted as a photon, which generate the corona glow around the pin. The fuzziness of the pin is because the camera did not actually capture light reflected on the pin but rather the light emitted by the ionized light around it. - Richard Germain Richard Germain/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Calmness of Eternity Himalayas mountains, Nepal. Gosaikunda high-mountain lake. Point of shooting - 4400m. The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter between 150,000 and 200,000 light-years. It is estimated to contain 100‚ 400 billion stars Yevhen Samuchenko Yevhen Samuchenko/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Stag beetle Stag beetle. Light microscopy. Magnification 5x. - Viktor Sykora Viktor Sykora/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Mapping1_OxygenIb_PEM Final Major Project for an MA Photography Falmouth University. Project: Mapping 1, Post Exertional Malaise. Mapping 1, focuses on discovering the research behind Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Through exploration of perspective, complexities, and scientific multidisciplinary collaborations, I create imagery that explains, reveals and connects us consciously to the ambiguous and unknown. - Yasmin Crawford Yasmin Crawford/RPS Science Photographer of the Year shortlist Lovell Telescope Series 1c I have always been fascinated with the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank since I went on a school trip as a child. Here, I wanted to take a series of closer, more detailed and more honest shots than we often see. Exploring the multitude of shapes and exposing the wear of the telescope, each photo in the series stands alone or can be viewed collectively, either way, they present a powerful portrayal of machine that helps humankind in their endeavours to understand space and time. - Marge Bradshaw Marge Bradshaw/RPS

The ice shows the impact of the killing of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket, amid a fallout between the monarchy and the church, which caused lead production to plummet (pun intended), and also reveals the industrial impact of wars and major building projects by the Anglo-Norman kings, Henry II, Richard the Lionheart and John.

Professor Christopher Loveluck, from the University of Nottingham’s department of classics and archaeology, said: “The correlation between evidence of lead production in Britain in the ice core deposits and the tax paid on lead mines is astonishing!

“We see direct associations between production levels and the workings of government at the time, for example, lead taxation and lead production plummets in the year when a king dies before they are succeeded by another one. This is because medieval governments shut down in the interregnum.

“The ice core shows precisely when one king died, and lead production fell and then rose again with the next monarch. We can see the deaths of King Henry II, Richard Lionheart and King John there in the ancient ice.”

The ice core was bored out of the Colle Gnifetti glacier in the Monte Rosa Massif on the Swiss-Italian border in 2013. It is highly compacted and is made up of invisible layers containing chemical elements that form an annual chemical fingerprint, analogous to a tree ring.

The researchers said it is yielding an unparalleled year-by-year picture of more than 2,000 years of climate-related, environmental, economic and political history.

It is the first time the environmental impact of a medieval macro-economy, and political influences upon it, have been fully demonstrable on an annual basis, the scientists said.

The lead deposits provide a timeline of the use of the toxic metal into the 20th century, and provide new perspective on the impact of human activity on air quality many hundreds of years ago.

Professor Loveluck said: “Our results show that the 12th century has the same levels of lead pollution as we see in the mid-17th century and even in 1890 so our notions of atmospheric pollution starting in the industrial revolution are wrong.

“Then the ice core shows a rise with lead petrol in the motor car, and a big fall when lead is banned from fuel in the 1970s.”

Lead and silver are often mined together, and lead has been used for centuries for roofs, water pipes, stained glass windows and even paint, but it is a toxic metal that, even at very low levels of exposure, can reduce brain function and result in lifelong health complications.

The scientists said the impact of such long-term pollution on our lived environment at a western European level has barely been made clear until now.

“By shining a laser on centuries-old ice we’ve learned to read glaciers as we read a book,” said assistant professor Alexander More, of Long Island University in New York, Harvard University and the Climate Change Institute, Maine. “We’re doing both, and much more, to shed light on the economic and health implications of such extensive lead pollution in our environment.”

Previous work on the same ice core in 2017 revealed the catastrophic impact of the 14th century Black Death on metal production.

The researchers now say this begs the question – will future scientists be able to “see” the current coronavirus pandemic in the ice being laid down on that same glacier or in polar ice if it survives in the centuries to come?