Bioarcheology

This lab is about
modern human variation.

We've been learning
all about fossils

and leading up to Homo sapiens.

And now what we're
going to do is

look at the variation in
different human populations

and different features, first of
all, that males and females have

that we can use to look at
a population in the past.

Sometimes in ancient
Egypt, people were buried

and now people are excavating
them and you get a population.

And you say, OK, I have 16
females, 32 males and things

like that.

And you can tell that
by the various features

that these skulls have.

This for example, you can
look at this jaw here.

This is definitely a male.

Females don't do this.

So that's one thing we're
going to do in this lab.

The second thing is as you
look at these populations that

are buried in ancient
Egypt, or in Peru,

or wherever they're found,
you find things like this.

And this is a tibia, and you
can tell that it was broken.

And it healed.

And so we can see
that this-- whoever

belonged the skeleton
that has this tibia

had some kind of injury.

We can tell if there
was domestic violence,

because sometimes you get hit.

If you're holding up your
face to protect your face,

you get hit.

You can see all these
different things.

So this is called
paleopathology.

We're looking at the pathology
on the bones, the broken bones,

diseased bones, et cetera.

The third thing that we're
going to talk about in this lab

is forensic anthropology.

Everyone is very excited
about forensic anthropology

from watching CSI.

But it's really difficult
to find a skeleton

and identify it
to sex, et cetera.

This rib right here
has a bullet in it.

So this person, the bullet
is in there and it healed.

So if this was a part of
a skeleton that was found

and the police are trying
to find out what happened,

it was obviously shot.

But this was not the
death bullet, so to speak.

Sometimes people
have dental records

and you can look at the teeth.

This poor guy got
beaned with an axe.

And then there are diseases
that we can look at too.

This is what happens
when you have

syphilis for a very long time.

Your skull gets all of these
little porosities on it.

So in modern humans, for
forensics and for populations,

we can tell a lot
just by looking

at the skeletal material.