Evidence Of 4000year Old Teeth

[Buff-horns]

Teeth reveal rich pickings for men

Kate Ravilious

Friday November 25, 2005

The Guardian

Four-thousand-year-old human teeth from Thailand have revealed that local men feasted on exotic foods, while women subsisted on bland local fare.

The findings help shed light on the transition from a hunter-gathering to a farming lifestyle. It seems hunter-gatherer men in south-east Asia travelled far and wide to find their bride, eventually settling in small farming communities.

Alex Bentley, an anthropologist from the University of Durham, and his colleagues extracted teeth and bone samples from 42 different male and female skeletons buried in Ban Chiang, a village in north-east Thailand. The skeletons dated from 2,000-4,000 years ago. Back in the lab the scientists analysed the chemistry of the samples, measuring levels of strontium, carbon and oxygen.

Ratios of the isotopes of these chemical elements can provide clues about where a person was from and what kind of diet they had. Strontium exists in rocks and soil and finds its way into the human body through diet. For example, volcanic rocks from a mountain region will have a different strontium signature to sandy sediments from a river delta, so mountain-dwellers will have different levels in their bones to lowlanders.

Oxygen isotopes reveal what kind of water you drink and give another indirect clue as to where a person lives: Volvic spring water has a completely different chemistry to London tap water. Carbon isotopes indicate diet, on a sliding scale between vegetarians and carnivores. The scientists found striking differences in the isotope patterns of women and men. In particular, strontium isotopes showed a wide variation in the male population, suggesting that most of the men had travelled a lot and possibly migrated long distances. However, females had similar strontium signatures, with a distinct narrowing of the values around 3,000 years ago. "This might suggest an increased sexual division of labour, such that boys ranged over a wide area while hunting and gathering, and women remained closer to the settlement," says the study, published in the journal Antiquity.

Further support for this idea comes from the slightly more positive carbon isotope values found in the male bones around this time, suggesting that men ate more meat from their hunts while women ended up with the leftovers and locally gathered food at home.

However, this is not the only explanation. "These results might reflect a cultural pattern of matrilocality, by which the man immigrates to the woman's birthplace after marriage," says the study.

The Thai evidence contrasts strongly with previous isotope studies from central Europe for the same time period, showing that the structure of society was quite different.

In Europe it was the women who had a wide variation in strontium isotope values and the men who had a narrow range, showing that farms were passed down father to son and that brides moved to their husband's birthplace.

[kayo]

Did they need any fillings... If not, i´d like to get those teeth implanted.

[Guest endure]

Teeth reveal rich pickings for men

Kate Ravilious

Friday November 25, 2005

The Guardian

Four-thousand-year-old human teeth from Thailand have revealed that local men feasted on exotic foods, while women subsisted on bland local fare.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was wondering where they'd gone. I'm sure I left them in a glass at the side of the bed last night