The Backbone of History

This study gathers skeletal evidence on seven basic indicators of health to assess chronic conditions that affected individuals who lived in the Western Hemisphere from 5000 B.C. to the late nineteenth century. Signs of biological stress in childhood and of degeneration in joints and in teeth increased in the several millenia before the arrival of Columbus as populations moved into less healthy ecological environments.

Richard H. Steckel is Professor of Economics and Anthropology at Ohio State University. His most recent publications include Health and Welfare During Industrialization, which he coedited with Roderick Floud, and A Population History of the United States, which he co-edited with Michael Haines.

Jerome C. Rose is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas. He has conducted bioarcheological excavations in Illinois, Arkansas, Texas, Egypt, and Jordan.