Reduced Mobility Led to Smaller Bones in Farmers

Angela

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This is the link to the study:
http://www.archaeology.org/news/3305-150521-mobility-bone-strength

"BALTIMORE, MARYLAND—A recent study of the bones of hundreds of people who lived in Europe over the past 33,000 years suggests that the rise of agriculture and the corresponding reduced mobility led to a change in human bones. Christopher Ruff of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a team of researchers from Europe and the United States took molds of arm and leg bones in museum collections and scanned them with portable x-ray machines. “By comparing the lower limbs with the upper limbs, which are little affected by how much walking or running a person does, we could determine whether the changes we saw were due to mobility or to something else, like nutrition,” Ruff said in a press release. The team found that leg-bone strength began to decline in the Mesolithic era, some 10,000 years ago, while arm bone strength remained fairly steady. “The decline continued for thousands of years, suggesting that people had a very long transition from the start of agriculture to a completely settled lifestyle. But by the medieval period, bones were about the same strength as they are today.”

There's nothing new in the hypothesis, but it's interesting that they used the difference between arm and leg development to try to factor out changes in nutrition.

I also found in interesting that in this case it took so long.
 
This is the link to the study:
http://www.archaeology.org/news/3305-150521-mobility-bone-strength

"BALTIMORE, MARYLAND—A recent study of the bones of hundreds of people who lived in Europe over the past 33,000 years suggests that the rise of agriculture and the corresponding reduced mobility led to a change in human bones. Christopher Ruff of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a team of researchers from Europe and the United States took molds of arm and leg bones in museum collections and scanned them with portable x-ray machines. “By comparing the lower limbs with the upper limbs, which are little affected by how much walking or running a person does, we could determine whether the changes we saw were due to mobility or to something else, like nutrition,” Ruff said in a press release. The team found that leg-bone strength began to decline in the Mesolithic era, some 10,000 years ago, while arm bone strength remained fairly steady. “The decline continued for thousands of years, suggesting that people had a very long transition from the start of agriculture to a completely settled lifestyle. But by the medieval period, bones were about the same strength as they are today.”

There's nothing new in the hypothesis, but it's interesting that they used the difference between arm and leg development to try to factor out changes in nutrition.

I also found in interesting that in this case it took so long.
I never liked that hypothesis. They are compering hunter gatherers of Europe to Neolithic farmers from Near East. To see a real change due to diet and change of lifestyle, they should compare Near Eastern Neolithic farmers to their predecessors, hunter gatherers of Near East who lived 20 or 30 kya. Otherwise they compare unrelated people who where separated by perhaps 50 ky or more.
They might as well compare HGs Pygmies to Nigerian farmers. I wonder how they can explain loss of bones and physique in Pygmies?
 
I never liked that hypothesis. They are compering hunter gatherers of Europe to Neolithic farmers from Near East. To see a real change due to diet and change of lifestyle, they should compare Near Eastern Neolithic farmers to their predecessors, hunter gatherers of Near East who lived 20 or 30 kya. Otherwise they compare unrelated people who where separated by perhaps 50 ky or more.
They might as well compare HGs Pygmies to Nigerian farmers. I wonder how they can explain loss of bones and physique in Pygmies?

I agree with you. It's the problem with studies on mesologic influences; they often have to apply to populations different in age and in origin. I even recall a statement in a survey about the Neolithic transition in Portugal when i red some of the considered Neolithic cultural Portuguese of the time had 'femurs' (femora?) showing more stress and work than the 'femurs' of the Mesolithic neighbors; I 'll try to find the source to be sure but? and what kind of Mesolithic (and Paleolithic) people? Are we sure the inhabitants of the coasts had the same diet and same distances to run as inhabitants of inlands? That said, it's sure way of life had an effect upon the skeleton, but to obtain good measures of difference in an hard work because of sampling questions. HereI agree the age is not a problem because the survey is about a change of activities in time, but the origin is one. And the conclusion about "today" is a bit puzzling because I'm sure the skeletal qualities have changed very more among the genrations after the 2° Mondial War ("European Mondial" to be right!) than among the generations before it.
 

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