Scientists have found evidence that Roman children were affected by rickets because they were not being exposed to adequate levels of sunshine.
The disease, which is caused by a lack of vitamin D, was more common in Britain than anywhere else in the Roman Empire.
The condition is commonly associated with the smoggy industrial towns of 19th Century Victorian Britain but the new study by researchers provides new evidence it was around nearly 2,000 years beforehand.
This infant skeleton, and 2,786 others, shows that rickets was commonly found during the Roman era, crippling children who did not get enough sunlight. The disease, which is caused by a lack of vitamin D, was more common in Britain than anywhere else in the Roman Empire
Scientists from Historic England and McAster University in Canada have found evidence that the condition affected people throughout the Roman empire.
During the three-year project, the team of researchers examined Roman skeletons from northern England to southern Spain.
They studied 2,787 skeletons from 18 cemeteries across the Roman empire, looking for the deformities generally seen in rickets.
The findings reveal that vitamin D deficiency which causes rickets, a condition whose signs include skeletal deformity and bone pain, ‘is far from being a new problem’.
Though vitamin D was not as bad a problem in Roman times as in the Victorian era, evidence for rickets was found in more than one in 20 children whose skeletons were studied, with most cases seen in infants.
However, one in 10 of the youngsters from English cemeteries was suffering the bone disorder.
A century ago, rickets was rife in children, due to crowded urban living and industrial pollution.
The disease mostly disappearing in the western world during the early 20th century as food was fortified with vitamin D.
Rickets has seen a resurgence in the UK in recent years, although levels are still relatively low.
The researchers said weaker sunshine at northern latitudes makes vitamin D synthesis less effective, but the high number of infants with the deficiency suggests the way very young children were cared for could also be to blame.

People who were afflicted with rickets had bone deformities, including bowed legs (pictured) which the researchers looked for across various sites from northern England and southern Spain

An illustration shows how mothers and babies in the Roman Empire may have stayed indoors away from sunlight
Colder conditions may have meant babies were kept indoors more, away from sunshine, while pregnant mothers may have been vitamin D deficient and passed this on to their children.
Simon Mays, a human skeletal biologist at Historic England, said: ‘Our study shows that vitamin D deficiency is far from being a new problem – even 2,000 years ago people, especially babies, were at risk.
‘Being indoors away from sunshine was probably a key factor.
‘Infant care practices that were innocuous in a Mediterranean climate may have been enough to tip babies into vitamin D deficiency under cloudy northern skies.’
Vitamin D deficiency in Roman times was no more common in towns than in the countryside – unlike in the 19th century.
This is because most Roman towns were fairly small in comparison to the industrialised cities of the Victorian era and did not have the same levels of pollution which would block out the sunlight, the researchers said.
But one place in the study, a cemetery near Ostia, Italy, bucked this trend with a high number of skeletons with rickets.
Ostia was a port town which was densely populated and many people lived in multi-storey apartment buildings.
Megan Brickley of McMaster University said: ‘Living in apartments with small windows, in blocks that were closely spaced around courtyards and narrow streets, may have meant that many children weren’t exposed to enough sunlight to prevent vitamin D deficiency.’
The study was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.