RI Christmas lectures

[Tessa K]

It's forensics this year.

One thing I thought wasn't clear. Prof Sue Black said there are 4 main identifiers of bodies (skeletons): sex, age, height and ethnicity.

But when it came to ethnicity, she and another expert explained how what we eat and drink leaves markers in hair and bone that shows where we're from. But as the sample from the volunteer clearly showed, that indicates where we've lived, not ethnicity.

Are there markers for ethnicity? It may be simpler on archeological finds as people moved around less but even then some people travelled (or were captured and transported).

Also, is it possible to tell from just bones if a person was trans?

[bagpuss]

From what I've understood from reading fiction based around forensic anthropology (so take with a few tonnes of salt), there are some physical differences that can be indicative of race* but as you'd expect, they're nothing like as distinctive as differences in the pelvis between adult men and adult women.

I'd have thought that DNA, if it's possible to get a good sample, would do a better job of estimating race/ethnicity. If an Ancestry DNA test can correctly tell that my ancestors are from the UK, with a strong influence from Kent/Sussex and a chunk of Scottish, then it should be possible to get a pretty good idea of someone's ethnicity, as long as there's a big enough sample of known individuals to compare it to.


I wondered the same about trans - my guess would be that there's been insufficient research/experience to know at this point. But I'd speculate that taking hormones, especially if starting young enough, must have some impact on the skeleton. But how much, and how early you'd need to take them, and would it be possible, without looking at DNA, to tell if someone was trans and if so a trans man or trans woman, intrigues me.


And on a separate point, I'm definitely a woman, and have been since birth, but I can feel that clear ridge at the base of my skull that apparently only men have. So I think it's all a lot more complicated than that anyway.


* it's been a while since I read such stuff but I dimly remember mention of variations in brow size/shape but no idea how accurate either my memory or the descriptions in the books might be.

Edit - correct a couple of typos and add a "/ethnicity"

[EACLucifer]

It's forensics this year.

One thing I thought wasn't clear. Prof Sue Black said there are 4 main identifiers of bodies (skeletons): sex, age, height and ethnicity.

But when it came to ethnicity, she and another expert explained how what we eat and drink leaves markers in hair and bone that shows where we're from. But as the sample from the volunteer clearly showed, that indicates where we've lived, not ethnicity.

Are there markers for ethnicity? It may be simpler on archeological finds as people moved around less but even then some people travelled (or were captured and transported).

Also, is it possible to tell from just bones if a person was trans?

Ethnicity is a complicated subject, because it includes cultural aspects, which includes traditional diets, which leave the sort of markers you mentioned.

I've seen references to craniometric analysis to try and identify ancestry in archaeology, but I don't know much about it. Unfortunately, trying to casually search for it instead finds pseudoscientific rot that claims to be able to assess people's attributes from skull shape, which is of course racist b.llsh.t.

[bagpuss]

Oh, and tonight is the one we took the bagkitten to see. It's about crime scene forensics and no evident bodies in this one.

[Tessa K]

It's forensics this year.

One thing I thought wasn't clear. Prof Sue Black said there are 4 main identifiers of bodies (skeletons): sex, age, height and ethnicity.

But when it came to ethnicity, she and another expert explained how what we eat and drink leaves markers in hair and bone that shows where we're from. But as the sample from the volunteer clearly showed, that indicates where we've lived, not ethnicity.

Are there markers for ethnicity? It may be simpler on archeological finds as people moved around less but even then some people travelled (or were captured and transported).

Also, is it possible to tell from just bones if a person was trans?

Ethnicity is a complicated subject, because it includes cultural aspects, which includes traditional diets, which leave the sort of markers you mentioned.

I've seen references to craniometric analysis to try and identify ancestry in archaeology, but I don't know much about it. Unfortunately, trying to casually search for it instead finds pseudoscientific rot that claims to be able to assess people's attributes from skull shape, which is of course racist b.llsh.t.

Traditional diets would be less of a marker today though if, for example, someone of African ethnicity lived all their life in Sweden.

[EACLucifer]

It's forensics this year.

One thing I thought wasn't clear. Prof Sue Black said there are 4 main identifiers of bodies (skeletons): sex, age, height and ethnicity.

But when it came to ethnicity, she and another expert explained how what we eat and drink leaves markers in hair and bone that shows where we're from. But as the sample from the volunteer clearly showed, that indicates where we've lived, not ethnicity.

Are there markers for ethnicity? It may be simpler on archeological finds as people moved around less but even then some people travelled (or were captured and transported).

Also, is it possible to tell from just bones if a person was trans?

Ethnicity is a complicated subject, because it includes cultural aspects, which includes traditional diets, which leave the sort of markers you mentioned.

I've seen references to craniometric analysis to try and identify ancestry in archaeology, but I don't know much about it. Unfortunately, trying to casually search for it instead finds pseudoscientific rot that claims to be able to assess people's attributes from skull shape, which is of course racist b.llsh.t.

Traditional diets would be less of a marker today though if, for example, someone of African ethnicity lived all their life in Sweden.

Yes. I tend to always think of this stuff in terms of it's archaeological applications - it's helpful for telling us if, say, the victims of Shang dynasty human sacrifice were of the same basic racial group as the perpetrators, but less useful for modern forensics.

[Lew Dolby]

(just about to watch last night's) - Teeth, in particular the shapes of the "backs" of them are pretty good indicators of East Asia / Chinese or not ethnicity.

[Martin_B]

(just about to watch last night's) - Teeth, in particular the shapes of the "backs" of them are pretty good indicators of East Asia / Chinese or not ethnicity.

I recall a study (possibly some years ago, and maybe it's been debunked) but Asian and western teeth and jaws are different because of the difference in using chopsticks vs forks. IIRC, the use of forks has made the lower jaw less prominent.

[Woodchopper]

Here’s a review of lots of research on evaluation of ancestry from skeletal remains: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10 ... 19.1697060

[Woodchopper]

I wondered the same about trans - my guess would be that there's been insufficient research/experience to know at this point. But I'd speculate that taking hormones, especially if starting young enough, must have some impact on the skeleton. But how much, and how early you'd need to take them, and would it be possible, without looking at DNA, to tell if someone was trans and if so a trans man or trans woman, intrigues me.

Concerning the shape of the skeleton this article finds that among children given gender affirming hormone therapy “[p]articipants in our current study, starting in mid or late puberty, acquired bone geometry more closely resembling the reference curve of the gender assigned at birth. This illustrates that the main effect of testosterone and estrogen on periosteal and endocortical bone growth occurs during early puberty.”
https://asbmr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d ... /jbmr.4262

But it’s a small study in an emerging field of research so it’s not a definitive finding.