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![]() He got it mostly right, but also seeded myths-such as the theory that bones consist of the same matter as semen because they share a similar color. More than 2,000 years ago, in what is now Turkey, the physician and philosopher Galen undertook one of the first systematic studies of human anatomy. It took centuries for humans to understand it. The human skeleton is a brilliant feat of evolution. Though made from soft tissue, bones are tremendously strong. Adult humans have 206 bones, which shelter vital organs while also working in concert with muscles to give humans their characteristic fluid rigidity. When living, they are a bank of salts, calcium, and red blood cells. Bones, which The Anatomy and Biology of the Human Skeleton describes as the “remnants of mineralized connective tissue,” are made up of cells arranged in a matrix like a spiderweb. Science tends to take a cold view of the dead. But I also felt their humanity surround me in the present. Seeing those two ancients tenderly touching each other in death, I had an immediate link to their history, previously lost to the past. ![]() It was a moment that would shape my view of what human remains mean. I realized that the pair likely died at the same time and were placed in the grave side-by-side, holding hands. Her hand was situated just below the right hand of the second. When I finished exposing the left hand of this third individual, I gasped. I had already uncovered two bodies in the shallow pit, and now a third skull appeared. Here, the graves were loaded with shell and turquoise jewelry, stone animal carvings, bone hairpins, and whole jars and stone points. In the Southwest, ancient graves typically consist of the bones of the dead along with a few nonperishable artifacts, such as pottery or stone. The archaeological work was slow and painstaking-not only because of the sheer number of burials, but also because of their dazzling contents. As cars whizzed by, I dug into the soft dirt to reveal pearl-white bones. The road needed to be realigned, but more than 300 burials stood in its way, left some 750 years ago by a Native American group scholars call the Salado. My own imagination was stirred when I excavated my first grave along Highway 188 in central Arizona more than 20 years ago. In medieval Europe, the skeleton was commonly portrayed as a memento mori-a reminder of the inevitability of death.įrom Hamlet’s gaze into the eye sockets of the departed court jester, to Paris’s underground catacombs (where there are 6 million skeletons for the public to view), to the laughing skulls carved on pumpkins for Halloween, human bones continue to haunt the collective imagination. The Chimbu tribe of Papua New Guinea intimidates enemies by painting their entire bodies in frightening versions of skeletons, becoming an army of the dead. ![]() For a thousand years, Japanese folklore has warned of the gashadokuro, a colossal starving skeleton who feasts on the living in the dark of night. Humanity’s first farmers also ritually de-fleshed, carved, and displayed human crania. Archaeologists recently revealed an 11,000-year-old “skull cult” in Turkey. ![]()
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