Forensic sciences journal

[drfrekels-blog]

Fracture Classification

[ambcha]

[theolduvaigorge]

Source?

[theladygoogle]

This is what I could find for the source. I found it through searching the photo, found a reddit thread wherein the paper was translated here. 

[theolduvaigorge]

Agriculture, Declining Mobility Drove Humans’ Shift To Lighter Bones

“Modern lifestyles have famously made humans heavier, but, in one particular way, noticeably lighter weight than our hunter-gatherer ancestors: in the bones. Now a new study of the bones of hundreds of humans who lived during the past 33,000 years in Europe finds the rise of agriculture and a corresponding fall in mobility drove the change, rather than urbanization, nutrition or other factors.  

The discovery is reported in the early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of May 18. It sheds light, researchers say, on a monumental change that has left modern humans susceptible to osteoporosis, a condition marked by brittle and thinning bones. At the root of the finding, the researchers say, is the knowledge that putting bones under the “stress” of walking, lifting and running leads them to pack on more calcium and grow stronger. 

“There was a lot of evidence that earlier humans had stronger bones and that weight-bearing exercise in modern humans prevents bone loss, but we didn’t know whether the shift to weaker bones over the past 30,000 years or so was driven by the rise in agriculture, diet, urbanization, domestication of the horse or other lifestyle changes,” says Christopher Ruff, Ph.D., a professor of functional anatomy and evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.       “By analyzing many arm and leg bone samples from throughout that time span, we found that European humans’ bones grew weaker gradually as they developed and adopted agriculture and settled down to a more sedentary lifestyle, and that moving into cities and other factors had little impact.” 

The study was a collaborative effort of researchers from across Europe and the United States that began in 2008. The group focused on Europe because it has many well-studied archeological sites, Ruff says, and because the population has relatively little genetic variation, despite some population movements. That meant that any changes observed could be attributed more to lifestyle than to genetics” (read more).

***Wait, is this the Chirchir et al. article?

(Source: Johns Hopkins University; top image: Visuals Unlimited)

[raspuma-deactivated20121223]

Scientists examine a 15-year-old girl who lived in the Inca Empire, then was sacrificed and remained frozen for 500 years…. Unearthed in 1999 from the 22,000-foot summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a volcano 300 miles west of here near the Chilean border, their frozen bodies were among the best preserved mummies ever found, with internal organs intact, blood still present in the heart and lungs, and skin and facial features mostly unscathed. No special effort had been made to preserve them. The cold and the dry, thin air did all the work. They froze to death as they slept, and 500 years later still looked like sleeping children, not mummies.

[cheyennecc]

 This is “the maiden” and she is extraordinary. After a CAT scan or two it was determined that she had tuberculosis. Do you know what this means?!?!? It means that tuberculosis was a preexisting condition and not initially brought over to the Americas by Europeans. WOW

[the-puppet-rises-deactivated201]

i like her shoes

[omgahalucinatorypieceofbaconblo]

Of all the fucking things to comment

[jenninova]

I’ve commented about her before, but SHE’S JUST SO INTERESTING

Her hair? That’s microbraids! Itty bitty teeny tiny braids, and so very many of them

They were able to like determine how much drugs and alcohol she had in her system, because she was (by what we can tell) a willing sacrifice, and she was drunk and drugged to make passing easier. 

We could determine stuff like what kind of make-up she was decorated with.  Ridiculous details about fibers and stuff that we simply can’t find out many other ways because archaeology stuff looks at what doesn’t rot away, by and large.

Also, there was evidence of other sacrifices, but they had been struck by lightning and mostly destroyed, so finding her was even luckier with that in mind

[theolduvaigorge]

Cleaning the dead: Neolithic ritual processing of human bone at Scaloria Cave, Italy  

by John Robb, Ernestine S. Elster, Eugenia Isetti, Christopher J. Knüsel, Mary Anne Tafuri and Antonella Traverso

“Detailed taphonomic and skeletal analyses document the diverse and often unusual burial practices employed by European Neolithic populations. In the Upper Chamber at Scaloria Cave in southern Italy, the remains of some two dozen individuals had been subjected to careful and systematic defleshing and disarticulation involving cutting and scraping with stone tools, which had left their marks on the bones. In some cases these were not complete bodies but parts of bodies that had been brought to the cave from the surrounding area. The fragmented and commingled burial layer that resulted from these activities indicates complex secondary burial rites effecting the transition from entirely living to entirely dead individuals” (read more/open access).

(Open access source: Antiquity 89(343):39-54, 2015 via Academia.edu)

[thelastdiadoch]

The Suebian Knot and the Osterby Man

The Osterby man Radiocarbon dated to 75-130 AD, maybe even as late as 220 AD Discovered on the 28th of May, 1948. Kohlmoor near Osterby, Germany by Otto and Max Müller

After finding the head wrapped in deer skin they began searching for the body but found nothing. This lead to the belief that the head alone was deposited into the bog. According to the Gottorp Museum, that the Osterby man was about 50-60 years old. The hair was originally blonde with streaks of grey but the mineral-rich acids of the bog turned it reddish.

The left side of the head was fractured by a sharp weapon or instrument, likely the killing blow. He was then beheaded; the second cervical vertebra was cut in two and has hack marks ingrained in the bone. There is still debate to whether this was an act of human sacrifice, punishment for committing a crime or a form of ritual burial granting the older man an honorable death.

The body was never found, there’s speculation to whether or not the jawbone belongs to him and there have been accusations of contamination.

“[12] The punishment varies to suit the crime. The traitor and deserter are hanged on trees, the coward, the shirker and the unnaturally vicious are drowned in miry swamps under a cover of wattled hurdles.” - Tacitus’ Germania, Ch. 38 Suebi 

Location of the Suebi before Caesar’s Gallic War

Ariovistus, seen by Rome as king of the Germanic Suebi, was invited into Gaul by the Sequani and Arverni in exchange for his participation in their war against the Aedui and so in 63 BC they met at the Battle of Magetobriga.

During the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar took up the banner against the Suebi at the Battle of Vosges in 58 BC. After the battle, he and his men built a bridge in 10 days across the Rhine river and chased the Suebi back into Germania.

“- those Germans who are called the Suevi and excel all the others in power and numbers-”  - The Geography of  Strabo, 4:3

“-largest and the most warlike nation of all the Germans”. - Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico

Suebian Knot (German: Suebenknoten)

“We must come now to speak of the Suebi, who do not, like the Chatti or Tencteri, constitute a single nation. They actually occupy more than half Germany, and are divided into a number of distinct tribes under distinct names, though all generically are called Suebi. It is the special characteristic of this nation to comb the hair sideways and fasten it below with a knot.

This distinguishes the Suebi from the rest of the Germans; this, among the Suebi, distinguishes the freeman from the slave. In other nations that are either related in some degree to the Suebi or indulge in the common habit of imitation the practice does exist, but is uncommon and confined to early manhood. But with the Suebi the bristling hair, even till it turns white, is twisted back and often knotted on the very crown of the head.

The chiefs use an even more elaborate style. Such attention do they pay to their personal appearance—and yet in all innocence; it is not to make love or inspire it that they build their hair to such a terrifying height; all this elaborate make-up is to make themselves tall and terrible, they adorn themselves, so to speak, for the eyes of the foe, to impress the foe they will meet in battle.” - Tacitus’ Germania, Ch. 38

Sources:

- The Gallic Wars, By Julius Caesar  - The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved By Peter Vilhelm Glob  - Bodies from the Bog By James M. Deem - The Early Germans By Malcolm Todd   -  [PDF] Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (2004) 471–491:   Dating bog bodies by means of 14C-AMS   - Tacitus’ Germania 

[poisonwasthecure]

“Skeleton in the remains of a basketwork coffin, Tarkhan, Egypt, First Dynasty, ca. 3000 B.C.”

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Child, 2-4 yo

[odd-ities-blog]

[valdanderthal]

Source: Uripa Late Intermediate Period ( 1000-1400 D. C.) D. Kurin Cultural Membership: Chanka Mummy from a young adult male, with an age range between 20 to 35 years. It is in a position fetal with legs twisted up inside the thoracic cavity. Has arthritis.

Located at Museo Andahuaylas

[texantforimage]

Cranium of an 27 to 37 years old male with a traumatism from back to front by a gunshot wound…!! Note that one of the impacts in the left parietal bone, exhibit a large fault. That can occur when the object has impacted the surface laterally of the bone, in this case a bullet.