In the middle ages, what was life like for an ordinary people ? This question is very difficult to answer. Though, Skeletons can reveal this secret.
Researchers from Denmark, studied almost 822 medieval skeletons to investigate the life of men in the Middle Ages. For this they looked at fractured skulls and observes that though men who survived a skull fracture faced the risk of meeting an earlier death six times over healthy men.
The study provides latest and deep understanding about what it was like to live
with a fractured skull in the Middle Ages and can tell us about ordinary
people's risk of dying.
An author of this study, Jesper Lier Boldsen, from University of Southern Denmark says.
"In biological anthropology, this is one of the first time that we go behind the skeletons and reveal something about what it was like to live in that period. For many years we’e been able to say something about general mortality in the past and to relate something about the diseases which raged back then - but this study is one of the first to say something about how mortality risk varied from one person to another."
They published their work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and the method used by the scientists is totally new.
Professor Niels Lynnerup from Copenhagen University says.
"In my opinion the method is just as exciting as the results. The model they’ve used can be applied to other things - and that's important. We’ll be able to study other skeletal fractures and their effects. I'm full of admiration."
He finds the study interesting because it enhance our knowledge of how people lived in the Middle Ages.
The scientists used a mathematical model along with knowledge of the
skeleton's gender and age to estimate when the various individuals
died. According to model men with injury had an average age of 41,
whereas men who had not sustained fractured skulls lived for an average
of 42.7 years.
A number of projects have already started and that collection of skeleton will also here contribute to more knowledge about what life
was like for ordinary people in the Middle Ages.
Source: Videnskab, ScienceNordic
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