Download or read book What the Bones Tell Us written by Jeffrey H. Schwartz and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeffrey Schwartz, professor of physical anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, ranges from digs in the Negev Desert through Africa and Europe to the local coroner's office to explain how interpretations of the past are made. What counts is the data and the context in which the evidence is analyzed. Along the way the author constructs a new hominid family tree to take account of recent assessments of human evolution. The author, part of the team that recently unearthed burial urns from the ancient city of Carthage, exposes the inner workings of archeology and anthropology, illustrating what can be learned from fossils and fragments of ancient cultures and civilizations. Because every living thing on earth will have had a single, unique history, whether it be the life of an individual, of a civilization, a species, or a diverse evolutionary group, "the discovery," writes the author, "is less a matter of unearthing a fossil or sequencing a species' DNA than it is of interpreting data in an attempt to reconstruct the missing pieces of the puzzle." Bone fragments can be used not only to identify animal species but also to tell us of their past history. Studies of bones can also reveal the land's past capacity to sustain animal life, whether domestic or wild. Frequently the physical evidence overturns sacred historical writings (and occasionally such evidence is suppressed). And when the author misidentifies what turns out to be an incomplete human specimen for the coroner, we come to understand just how easily incomplete data can deceive us. After reading this fascinating and authoritative work, any reader will be better equipped to evaluate the evidence for various new theories about our origins and evolution. Another value of this pioneering book is its deep insight into scientific infighting and the competing speculations about evolutionary history. Scientists, however worldly, discover little truths - at best useful models of the past (good until some better data come along). Their theories, and the bases for them, must be accessible to others for scrutiny and possible rejection; that's the essence of the scientific method and this enormously thoughtful work.

Download or read book What the Bones Tell Us written by Jeffrey H. Schwartz and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthropologist who helped to unearth the ancient city of Carthage explains the new techniques used in physical anthropology that assist scientists in drawing conclusions about human origins and evolution from bones and artifacts

Download or read book Written in Bone written by Douglas W. Owsley and published by infobitsllc. This book was released on 2009 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Features over 150 archival photographs never before released from the forensic files of the Division of Physical Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC"--P. 2 of cover.

Download or read book What Bones Tell Us written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Reading the Bones written by Elizabeth Weiss and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can bones tell us about past lives? Do different bone shapes, sizes, and injuries reveal more about people's genes or about their environments? Reading the Bones tackles this question, guiding readers through one of the most hotly debated topics in bioarchaeology. Elizabeth Weiss assembles evidence from anthropological work, medical and sports studies, occupational studies, genetic twin studies, and animal research. Examining the most commonly utilized activity pattern indicators in the field, she reevaluates the age-old question of genes versus environment. While cross-sectional geometries frequently inform on mobility, Weiss asks whether these measures may also be influenced by climate-driven body shape adaptions. Entheseal changes—at the locations of muscle attachments—and osteoarthritis indicate wear and tear on joints but are also among the best predictors of age and can be used to reconstruct activity patterns. Weiss also examines the most common stress fractures, such as spondylolysis and clay-shoveler's fracture; stress hernias or Schmorl's nodes; and activity indicator facets like Poirier's facets, Allen's facets, and Baastrup's kissing spines. Probing deeper into the complex factors that result in the varying anomalies of the human skeleton, this thorough survey of activity indicators in bones helps us understand which markers are mainly due to human biology and which are truly useful in reconstructing lifestyle patterns of the past.

Download or read book Witnesses from the Grave written by Christopher Joyce and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book What My Bones Know written by Stephanie Foo and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing memoir of reckoning and healing by acclaimed journalist Stephanie Foo, investigating the little-understood science behind complex PTSD and how it has shaped her life “Achingly exquisite . . . providing real hope for those who long to heal.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, NPR, Mashable, She Reads, Publishers Weekly By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it. Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman’s ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.

Download or read book Skeletons in Our Closet written by Clark Spencer Larsen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dead tell no tales. Or do they? This book shows that the dead can speak to us - about their lives, and ours - through the remarkable insights of bioarchaeology, which reconstructs the lives and lifestyles of skeletal remains.

Download or read book Written in Bone written by Sue Black and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Crime Writers’ Association ALCS Gold Dagger for Nonfiction— A tour through the human skeleton and the secrets our bones reveal, from the author of All That Remains In her memoir All That Remains, internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence, all leavened with her wicked sense of humor. In her new book, Sue Black builds on the first, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones, which she calls "the last sentinels of our mortal life to bear witness to the way we lived it." Her narrative follows the skeleton from the top of the skull to the small bones in the foot. Each step of the journey includes an explanation of the biology—how the bone is formed in a person's development, how it changes as we age, the secrets it may hold—and is illustrated with anecdotes from the author's career helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, whether recent or historical. Written in Bone is full of entertaining stories that read like scenes from a true-life CSI drama, infused with humor and no-nonsense practicality about the realities of corpses and death.

Download or read book Trail of Bones written by Mary H. Manhein and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2005-09-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and an expert on the human skeleton, Mary H. Manhein assists law enforcement officials across the country in identifying bodies and solving criminal cases. In Trail of Bones, her much-anticipated sequel to The Bone Lady, Manhein reveals the everyday realities of forensic anthropology. Going beyond the stereotypes portrayed on television, this real-life crime scene investigator unveils a gritty, exhausting, exacting, alternately rewarding and frustrating world where teamwork supersedes individual heroics and some cases unfortunately remain unsolved. A natural storyteller, Manhein provides gripping accounts of dozens of cases from her twenty-four-year career. Some of them are famous. She describes her involvement in the hunt for two serial killers who simultaneously terrorized the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, region for years; her efforts to recover the remains of the seven astronauts killed in the Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003; and her ultimately successful struggle to identify the beheaded toddler known for years as Precious Doe. Less well-known but equally compelling are cases involving the remains of a Korean War soldier buried for more than forty years and the mystery of “Mardi Gras Man,” who was wearing a string of plastic beads when his body was discovered. Manhein describes how the increased popularity of tattoos has aided her work and how forensic science has labored to expose frauds—including a fake “big foot” track she examined from Louisiana's Kisatchie National Forest. She also shares ambitious plans to create a database of biological and DNA profiles of all of the state's missing and unidentified persons. Possessing both compassion and tenacity, Mary Manhein has an extraordinary gift for telling a life story through bones. Trail of Bones takes readers on an entertaining and educating walk in the shoes of this remarkable scientist who has dedicated her life to providing justice for those no longer able to speak for themselves.

Download or read book What Bones Tell Us written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Skeleton Keys written by Riley Black (Brian Switek) and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A provocative and entertaining magical mineral tour through the life and afterlife of bone.” —Wall Street Journal Our bones have many stories to tell, if you know how to listen. Bone is a marvel, an adaptable and resilient building material developed over more than four hundred million years of evolutionary history. It gives your body its shape and the ability to move. It grows and changes with you, an undeniable document of who you are and how you lived. Arguably, no other part of the human anatomy has such rich scientific and cultural significance, both brimming with life and a potent symbol of death. In this delightful natural and cultural history of bone, Brian Switek explains where our skeletons came from, what they do inside us, and what others can learn about us when these artifacts of mineral and protein are all we've left behind. Bone is as embedded in our culture as it is in our bodies. Our species has made instruments and jewelry from bone, treated the dead like collectors' items, put our faith in skull bumps as guides to human behavior, and arranged skeletons into macabre tributes to the afterlife. Switek makes a compelling case for getting better acquainted with our skeletons, in all their surprising roles. Bridging the worlds of paleontology, anthropology, medicine, and forensics, Skeleton Keys illuminates the complex life of bones inside our bodies and out.

Download or read book Written in Bone written by Sally M. Walker and published by Carolrhoda Books ®. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bright white teeth. Straight leg bones. Awkwardly contorted arm bones. On a hot summer day in 2005, Dr. Douglas Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution peered into an excavated grave, carefully examining the fragile skeleton that had been buried there for four hundred years. "He was about fifteen years old when he died. And he was European," Owsley concluded. But how did he know? Just as forensic scientists use their knowledge of human remains to help solve crimes, they use similar skills to solve the mysteries of the long-ago past. Join author Sally M. Walker as she works alongside the scientists investigating colonial-era graves near Jamestown, Virginia, as well as other sites in Maryland. As you follow their investigations, she'll introduce you to what scientists believe are the lives of a teenage boy, a ship's captain, an indentured servant, a colonial official and his family, and an enslaved African girl. All are reaching beyond the grave to tell us their stories, which are written in bone.

Download or read book Bones written by Sara L. Latta and published by Enslow Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Uses true crime stories to explain the science of forensics and physical anthropology"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Built on Bones written by Brenna Hassett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city has killed most of your ancestors, and it's probably killing you, too - this book tells you why. Imagine you are a hunter-gatherer some 15,000 years ago. You've got a choice – carry on foraging, or plant a few seeds and move to one of those new-fangled settlements down the valley. What you won't know is that urban life is short and riddled with dozens of new diseases; your children will be shorter and sicklier than you are, they'll be plagued with gum disease, and stand a decent chance of a violent death at the point of a spear. Why would anyone choose this? This is one of the many intriguing questions tackled by Brenna Hassett in Built on Bones. Using research on skeletal remains from around the world, this book explores the history of humanity's experiment with the metropolis, and looks at why our ancestors chose city life, and why they have largely stuck to it. It explains the diseases, the deaths and the many other misadventures that we have unwittingly unleashed upon ourselves throughout the metropolitan past, and as the world becomes increasingly urbanised, what we can look forward to in the future. Telling the tale of shifts in human growth and health that have occurred as we transitioned from a mobile to a largely settled species. Built on Bones offers an accessible insight into a critical but relatively unheralded aspect of the human story: our recent evolution.

Download or read book Bones written by Sara L. Latta and published by Enslow Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All bones tell a story, you just have to know how to read them. Forensic anthropologists can tell if found bones are from a human or an animal, are male or female, and how a person lived and died. Readers will discover the techniques forensic anthropologists are using to solve both modern and ancient crimes.

Download or read book Estimation of the Time Since Death written by Burkhard Madea and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Estimation of the Time Since Death remains the foremost authoritative book on scientifically calculating the estimated time of death postmortem. Building on the success of previous editions which covered the early postmortem period, this new edition also covers the later postmortem period including putrefactive changes, entomology, and postmortem r