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Interested in how common broken bones are today, I stumbled across this study:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12111017/
> There were 6451 men and 6936 women followed for a median of 3.0 years. During this time there were 140 incident limb fractures in men and 391 in women.
Whereas OP's archaeological study had:
> Fractures were more prevalent in males (40%, n = 57/143) than females (26%, n = 25/95).
Age, maybe? Primary cause for fractures nowadays is osteoporosis, which AFAIK is more serious to women after menopause. Primary cause historically was accidents, with the opposite distribution.
Sport? I mean almost all the people I know had a broken bone or joint issue because of sport and then you have domestic accident.
For instance in Switzerland each year you have 550k non-professional accident (declared one to your employer) for 8.5M inhabitants. (Ref: SUVA annual report but only available in GE and FR)
Why is osteoporosis so prevalent in modern age? Diet?
Theory time - it could be due to reduced natural Vitamin D from lower sun exposure, a mostly sedentary life, combined with less life long physical labor (especially for women, who are severely under-represented in construction and heavy industry, which is about the only places you'd get that kind of exercise in modern society).
Lifting weight helps bones get stronger, and Vitamin D is an essential nutrient in proper bone building.
100 years ago even, most people lived and worked on farms in the US (and many other places), now it's single digit percentages - and many of them spend it driving vehicles and similar less physical labor.
That, and like many cancers, just a larger number of people living long enough to fall victim to it. Women developing what are usually postmenopausal issues more or less requires living to and through menopause. (Yes, old people got to be nearly as old as they do now, but getting to be old was much less of a sure thing.)
Osteoporosis is (largely) an old person's disease, and people are now living long enough to get it.
Key info missing from your comment:
> Men and women aged 50-79 years were recruited from population registers in 31 European centers.
They followed older people for 3 years. It is well-known that menopause causes osteoporosis, which makes women more at risk of bone fractures in older age. And in fact this is a study on osteoporosis...
If I'm reading this right, fractures are actually more prevalent these days?
There isn't enough information to be sure - we need to know more about the life expectancy of the medieval subjects and the likelihood of multiple fractures. Eyeballing it suggests yes, but within a factor of 2 either way.
Note though that the modern study involved older adults (50-79) who I would guess are more likely to get fractures: osteoporosis and weakened joints outweigh the increased risk from physical activity of younger people.
I find it difficult to compare these two sets of figures considering you're looking for fractures at any point in life on the skeletons, and for the study, the people were only followed for a median of 3 years (no need to say 3.0 for median).
It's off topic but there may indeed be a need to say 3.0 rather than 3 for median - the use of a median is orthogonal to the choice of precision.
Consider the median of: 2.9, 3.0, 3.1 years.
And while they were apparently counting fractures that had healed, I assume that's an imperfect exercise for relatively minor, clean fractures from many years prior.
I assume a pretty good portion of today's population gets a fracture on a limb at some point in their lives.
Men have had much more dangerous lives throughout history protecting women. I don't find this to surprising, although it is interesting to note.
I don’t think it’s to do with protecting women. Males die more and from all sorts of things, even before birth and as infants.
In terms of violent death, there is plenty that is unrelated to protecting women.
“Men's higher unintentional injury, suicide, and homicide mortality rates are observed in all age groups in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. The sole exception is for homicide of children under the age of 15 years in low- and high-income countries, where the rates for girls are similar to or higher than those for boys.”
I’m not sure how you would record whether a death was related to protecting a woman?
What about the men who were living dangerously by assaulting women? What do you think men were protecting women from? If you're going to talk about war, you have to talk about offense as well as defense, and some significant percentage of warriors were injured/killed while attacking, not defending, and then the survivors went on to rape and pillage. Some of these men were taking resources, not protecting them. For some men to be "protectors" means others are aggressors. If men lead more dangerous lives due to war and violence, you've got to consider how much of that danger they created themselves.
"Protection" that involves attacking others first is pretty questionable from a moral and practical standpoint. "No first strike" policies for nuclear weapons, for instance, would go a long way to making the world safer.
While this is true, I think you're forgetting about all of the ways men could be injured that don't involve actively protecting women.
Need to muscle some livestock? Probably mans job.
Need to cut trees? Probably mans job.
Need to stalk wild game through the forest? Probably mans job.
Need to lift heavy things that could injure you? Probably mans job.
A teenager being too aggressive and overdoing some activity? Probably a man.
It's not hard to see all the ways men could be injured by being men, that doesn't involve protecting women from predators.
Seems like a similar ballpark given historical life expectancy
In reading about this, my first thought was... in 300 years will they be digging up our current cemeteries?
The answer is a resounding 'very possible'. Although there are federal laws on the books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_ethics#Preserva...
There was a modern attempt at relocating a cemetery in 1988 that ultimately failed for political reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_Cemetery#Present_situat...
And there are things like this in the Texas State Code that give clearance for eminent domain actions: https://casetext.com/statute/texas-codes/water-code/title-4-...
So don't buy a plot in a prospective dam/reservoir area in Texas if you want to be undisturbed for centuries.
Does it really matter if you are dead, everyone who ever knew you is dead, and everyone that was told about you is dead?
I don't believe the burial grounds should just be disrespected and all the bones dumped in the trash, but if 300 years from now scientist want to research an aspect of our lives to further humanity it seems like the dead shouldn't be trying to hamper that.
I'd even be fine if the land was even used for building development so long as the removal process is similar to an archaeological dig and it is very easy for charitable groups to stake a claim to maintain the grounds and pay taxes on it. From an American perspective, I'm thinking of Native American religious burial sites, slave burial sites, and other sites that may have historical significance but were not allowed to be maintained properly.
In France, burial « concessions » are 10 years renewable to 30 years. I’m not sure what options are in case your family wants to keep your grave longer.
Is it indefinite duration in USA?
At least here in Ontario, Canada, cemetery plots are infinite duration, and the land is classified for that purpose forever. There are plenty of little cemetery plots attached to old 19th century churches in downtown Toronto, now surrounded by skyscrapers.
I think it's the same in the USA.
I personally have no idea. US culture is rather averse to discussing matters of death so this is all new. My brief searching around looks like this is tied to however you purchase the plot and the terms set with the cemetery itself and if they expire, they just bury someone a foot or two above the previous plot owner after removing the headstone....
Took me a while to find the referenced paper [0]. Way more detail (of course) but also accessible.
0 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24225
The article boils down to: "We can see that ordinary working folk had a higher risk of injury compared to the friars and their benefactors or the more sheltered hospital inmates" (ie. 44% compared to 32%/27% having bone fractures).
Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising.
It's important to have data to back our unsurprising assumptions. Lots of unsurprising assumptions have turned out to be false.
Indeed. Relatedly, here's Popular Science's list of articles in the category "Science Confirms The Obvious": https://www.popsci.com/tags/science-confirms-obvious/
> Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising.
Validating assumptions is useful science.
yeah, but it's also been published on the bbc and posted here.
I don't think that this quote is what the article boils down to. IMHO the key information is rather: ""However, severe trauma was prevalent across the social spectrum."
At all levels they found a significant number of skeletons with bone fractures.
Yes, the injury rate may be similar, but the sources of these injuries are likely not. Amongst the ruling classes, horses were the danger. Ride a horse and you will break more bones than the guy who walks to work. Be a friar working in a hospital, not toiling in the fields nor riding horses, and your fracture rate would be much lower.
I guess most research shouldn't be surprising, otherwise there'd be an eureka every day
There's certainly value in their finding. My comment was more targeted at the usual HN audience perhaps expecting an intellectually stimulating story.
Can't say much for hospital inmates but, bear in mind that friars in medieval Europe often had their days filled with plenty of hard physical labour as well, and often tended to farm plots for the benefit of their monasteries and church lands with lots of their own sweaty work. It was not what we would today consider a sedentary job at all. Though yes, a labourer would have been much more likely to suffer injuries regardless... One good fictional account of medieval life among all classes: Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet. Wonderful reading and realistically depicted in most ways.
Just because it isn't surprising doesn't mean it isn't interesting.
No, it doesn't. But it is very likely that one thing comes from the other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_(emotion)
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
What did you think the % of bone fractures would be before you read the article?
> Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising.
Yes! who cares about the lives of such lowly peasants.
/s
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I for found the gender difference quite surprising. I would not have imagined at the bottom levels of an agrarian society that there was much difference in the risks men and women faced.
But why? I'd expect across most societies historically for males to engage in more physically stressful work.
Not to undermine the value of women's work across that span, of course - but I'm genuinely surprised at your surprise.
A fun part about this is, forced labour for men remained legal until 1957’s UN treaty. Forced labour was abolished by the ILO treaty of 1930 but had a specific exclusion at Article 11, to exclude men 17-to-49 who didn’t have official or familial responsibilities.
ILO 1930 PDF: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangk...
> I for found the gender difference quite surprising.
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Could you provide the relevant quote?
^F "male"
> Across all sites the team found fractures were more common in male remains (40%) than female (26%)
This is not really surprising. Daily tasks were usually quite distinct between men and women.
And this is still the case to this day. The 10 most dangerous jobs in the US are male dominated.
You hear that Uber eats riders? you peasants, you! You too can make the news in just under 1,000 years, after you've fallen into a swamp (with your body staying preserved), after splitting your head on a rock, after going 30mph around a corner with an about-to-blow tire and a huge 8-person 'late' order in your painfully overburdened backpack, and lastly, after having been exhausted and worn out from the consecutive 60-hour weeks you've been making as a 'freelancer'...
/s
Or just disappear while trying to find a place to pee.