Posted on 01/25/2006 8:52:48 AM PST by blam
Time changes modern human's face
By Rebecca Morelle
BBC News science reporter
Our ancestors had more prominent features but lower foreheads
Researchers have found that the shape of the human skull has changed significantly over the past 650 years.
Modern people possess less prominent features but higher foreheads than our medieval ancestors.
Writing in the British Dental Journal, the team took careful measurements of groups of skulls spanning across 30 generations.
The scientists said the differences between past and present skull shapes were "striking".
Plague victims
The team used radiographic films of skulls to record extensive measurements taken by a computer.
They looked at 30 skulls dating from the mid-14th Century. They had come from the unlucky victims of the plague. The skulls had been excavated from plague pits in the 1980s in London.
Another 54 skulls examined by the team were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose which sank off the south coast of England in 1545.
All the skulls were compared with 31 recent orthodontic records from the School of Dentistry in Birmingham.
"This new research shows how bones... can provide more knowledge to the scientific community, and ultimately the public"
Professor Robert Foley, Cambridge University The two principal differences discovered were that our ancestors had more prominent features, but their cranial vault - the distance measured from the eyes to the top of the skull - was smaller.
Dr Peter Rock, lead author of the study and director of orthodontistry at Birmingham University, told the BBC News website: "The astonishing finding is the increased cranial vault heights.
"The increase is very considerable. For example, the vault height of the plague skulls were 80mm, and the modern ones were 95mm - that's in the order of 20% bigger, which is really rather a lot."
He suggests that the increase in size may be due to an increase in mental capacity over the ages.
Repatriating bones
The study of human remains has previously fallen into controversy, and a report commissioned by the UK government called for human remains to be repatriated where possible.
The ancient skulls used in this study, from which the radiographic films were taken, have either been reburied or are now housed in museums.
Professor Robert Foley is director of the Leverhulme Centre for Evolutionary Studies at Cambridge University, and sat on a government working group which has drawn up guidelines on working with human remains.
"The study of human remains can provide vital information about our past. There is a huge interest in our biological past - both from an evolutionary and a historical point of view - and research into human bones can tell us a great deal," he said.
"This new research shows how bones, and even the records of bones, can provide more knowledge to the scientific community, and ultimately the public."
I wonder if anyone considered that people with lower foreheads may have been more sensative to the plague?
The British Dental Journal?!
Do prematurely receding hairlines have anything to do with this?
"The British Dental Journal?!"
Or that there might be a financial correlation between lowbrow-ness, and being buried in a pit, as opposed to a grave.
Well, my forehead seems to be growing each year. Odd...
In 650 years, a key element of the skull changes 20%. Now, I suspect that it wouldn't take too much more to say that we are looking at two different species.
Well, if we were looking at the fossil record, the 650 years would be tricky to measure. But, if the Medieval skull were found in a geological strata 250,000 old, and the modern skull were found in a strata 100,000 years old, they would most likely to classed as two species. Quite possibly as examples of "transitional fossils".
Compare this with yesterday's fossil thread in while a mammal from millions of years ago was found to have gone through "retrogressive evolution" or something -- which means it got more primitive as time went on.
Uh huh.
Measuring things is doing the Devil's Work (and don't even think of taking a census)
I wonder whether modern diet/nutrition, along with advanced medicine (from pediatrics to OB to general practice), are enough to explain the difference...?
People were generally shorter then, also. So it seems to me that the body patterns and ratios would have been smaller ,too.......
I was in a Calibration Lab for 20 years. Our business was measuring things. Our profession's as old as the Old Testament in which it is mentioned, as "keeping honest weights and measures"................
...whenever I've happened to notice it.
Perhaps the cranial vault begins to shrink after death? The bones might just degenerate in that way.
"I'm not low-browed ... I'm just degenerated."
No, men don't like to sleep with women with course features, as much as ones with little noses, etc.
(And vice versa, I suppose.)
And, with civilization, we have the luxury of being picky.
Further, leaders and rich, tend to be more attractive and have more kids (until the advent of welfare!).
Is Judge Napolitano a throwback then?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
