Stories of Skeletons

by Reva Prabhune

Before the Renaissance, the skeleton was understood in its form and function as simply the hardest part of the body. Galen, a surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire, was one of the first to appreciate the skeleton for its necessity in facilitating the body’s shape and structural integrity. Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist of the Renaissance, authored the most influential book on human anatomy, “De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body),” which went against the work and authority of Galen. Vesalius pointed out Galen’s many errors relating to the number and shape of bones. The mistakes were probably made because Galen had never actually autopsied humans as the practice went against Roman traditions. Instead, he dissected animals and observed the human body during surgeries. While both anatomists had powerful impacts on our understanding and perspective of the skeleton, Vesalius was the first to recognize and study the skeleton as a whole and is thus referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy. 

In 1939, our understanding of the skeleton further evolved with E.J. Slijper, a Dutch anatomist, who investigated a deformed goat born in the Netherlands. This goat had a stump with a hoof for one front leg and a bare patch of fur where the second front leg was supposed to be. About three months into his life, the goat learned to move by pushing his back feet forward, thrusting him into a half-upright position, similar to that of a kangaroo. Essentially, he managed to move around by hopping. This was miraculous because the prevailing belief, until this point, had been that bones grew in established, inherited patterns. However, when E.J. Slijper dissected and studied the goat’s skeletal body, he discovered that the bones in the goat’s hips and legs were thick and the bones in the animal’s ankles were stretched. The angles at which the toes and hips were positioned were similar to those of animals that hop to move. Essentially, the goat overcame its physical deformity by adapting to an upright posture. The knowledge that experience and activity can mold the body was the foundation for the development of the field of osteobiography — which literally means the ‘biography of bones.’

Osteobiography is the study of the skeleton with the intent to reconstruct the identity and death of the individual in their social and cultural context. This has been adopted into forensic anthropology, applying skeletal analysis in solving criminal cases. The incorporation of osteobiographies in forensic anthropology has even inspired TV shows like “Bones.” The principal data obtained from skeletal remains include information like sex, age, ancestry, body height, pathological conditions and trauma. This anatomical evidence is correlated with information about social status, health and disease, habitual activities, level of physical labor, involvement in particular populations of a given time period and geographic region from which the skeleton was extracted. This evidence can enable the identification of the individual and can be useful in facial reconstruction imaging for more ancient remains. 

When it comes to principal data from the skeletal analysis, the first things that a researcher would observe would be sex, age, presence of disease and cause of death. A female individual is identifiable from their pelvic bones or their skull. A female skeleton has a broader sciatic notch, which is a concavity in the ilium, a bone of the pelvis. This is because the female pelvis is evolutionarily wider for childbirth. On the skull of a female, you would be able to observe a rounded frontal bone and round eye sockets with sharper edges to the upper borders. In comparison, on a male skull you would see a square jawline. 

Age can be determined by the growth of certain bones until adulthood sets in, at which point age is associated with deterioration and wear and tear. Teeth are very useful in gauging the age of children because the stages at which they develop are established. Adult teeth are worn down by chewing, but confounding variables like rough diets can render analysis difficult. The ends of the bone shafts fuse to short bone caps called epiphyses during bone growth. Different epiphyses fuse at different stages of growth, so by looking at this part of the bone and observing which stage of growth it is in, age of the individual can be accurately determined.

The circumstances surrounding an individual’s death can be understood from trauma analysis on the skeleton of violent deaths. There are three types of trauma: fractures, sharp force trauma and blunt force trauma. Fractures result from stresses on the bone, causing them to crack. Fractures are not always fatal, and their location and level of healing can indicate the type of injury and physical exercise that the individual was involved in. Sharp force trauma occurs when a sharp object like a blade or broken glass comes into contact with the bone. Blunt force trauma is the result of being hit with a blunt object. Nonviolent deaths can also be observed such as when cancer metastasizes, spreading from the soft tissue to the bone.

Primary skeletal analysis is the first step of osteobiographies and can give scientists insights into the details of individuals’ lives, which help us understand societies and lifestyles of the past. For example, dental attrition, the wearing away of teeth, was significantly worse during the Roman and Medieval periods in Britain. This was due to the fact that food during that time was very coarse as gravel from the stones that were used to grind wheat would get into the flour and erode people’s teeth. Dentistry during that time, which consisted of brushing teeth with chalk, charcoal and brick tooth powders, furthered dental attrition. By comparing remains from a certain location across time periods, researchers can understand why Romans had poor dental hygiene. 

Osteobiographies can help paint a picture of how life was lived in different social classes, cultures, etc. Bioarchaeologists use osteobiographies to research life throughout history, whereas forensic anthropologists use them to identify and study individuals. Bioarchaeological researchers use skeletal analyses on related groups of people, with the advantage of similar environmental factors. Forensic anthropologists, on the other hand, use osteobiographies on unrelated individuals by comparing skeletal profiles after death to antemortem records of the particular individual. Thus, forensic anthropologists test the hypotheses that bioarchaeological researchers make. This relationship between the two applications of anatomical science proves that osteobiographies help us understand issues that population studies cannot examine. Population studies are the examination of the demographics of a group of people unified by a certain characteristic like age, sex, or health condition with the aim of understanding something like their response to a drug, whereas osteobiographies are more than just population-focused. Rather, attention is paid to humanizing history and appreciating the social role of individuals, revolutionizing our understanding of the interplay between the body during life and the bones after death.