Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyberferret | Hacker News Reader

As a slight aside from the premise of the article, I was reminded of a story my friend once told me. He is a policeman, and works with the Water Police department in our town.

One day, they got a call from some dirt bikers who were riding in the mangroves beaches across the bay that they had found two skeletons partially buried in the mud. As per standard procedures, a police patrol was dispatched to investigate (which included my friend), and also as per SOP, because the area was a known ancient Aboriginal burial ground, they took an anthropologist out with them as part of the investigative team.

When they got to the site and were approaching the two semi exposed skeletons, the anthropologist said (while still a few feet away from them) "Oh, these pre date local colonial settlement and are probably over a hundred years old".

My policeman friend was curious, and asked her how she could tell even from afar that these were not more current remains, and she said "It's the teeth. There is absolutely no sign of decay caused by sugars in modern diets".

He (and I) never realised the extent of damage done to our teeth by what we eat today.

This is totally anecdotal, but we have a family friend who is an undertaker in a small town. He claims bodies today rot at a slower rate then when he started in the 50's. His theory is that its the preservatives in food.

I legit laughed at that. Morbid humor.

The changes in sensing time while growing old are said to work in the other direction, so he might be on to something. :)

Also, the moisture level in the soil might have changed.

Or the funeral homes got better at selling varnished coffins instead of pine boxes.

And at selling embalming as a standard and expected part of the process. For the UK at least:

- Varnished coffins are usually very thin veneer on top of mainly particle board - the glue is as problematic as any varnish, and add pollution to cremation. US coffins are commonly steel(!) apparently. "Brass" fittings are usually plastic, and not removed before cremation as you might expect.

- Embalming is so much an expected part you're not asked, it's just done. You'd have to already know it's not required and you may ask for no embalming. In former years it was common to have the coffin at home for a few days - with no embalming. Not that long ago either.

- Mind boggling amounts of formaldehyde (and other chemicals) are used by the funeral industry.

Source: Going too far down this rabbit hole and ultimately choosing a natural green funeral for me.

Burial in a wicker coffin in a forest somewhere has always appealed more to me than all these chemicals. I want to feed worms and trees after I die, not pollute the earth even more.

Throw me off a boat out at sea, wrapped in canvas. I'm good.

Also appealing. The problem with it is that at some point, a canvas wrapped body is going to wash ashore somewhere and people will want to know where it came from. Victim of an accident? A murder?

Edit: maybe weigh it down. That would work. And by "it" I mean yourself, I guess.

And please, skip the shoes. People have been wigged out for years around these parts, since shoes with the foot still inside have kept washing up on shore.

I think the consensus was that it was suicides or other drowning victims, not some nefarious plot, but people get twitchy.

I have to wonder how toxic the human body is. I have read that bioamplification of pesticides and heavy metals can be a problem for fish and birds. A quick google only shows me vague possibilities when reviewing humans. Is it worse for us because we're bigger and long lived, or does processed food avoid that sort of problem?

We're an apex predator, so should receive all the amplification effects seen travelling up a food chain. Course having accumulated toxins, it depends what you do with them afterwards. Natural decomposition tends to spread it back to the bacteria, fungi and small animals at the very base of the food chain again.

Burn the body in a gas furnace for a few hours and release loads of ugly things. Including all the artificial fibres, coffin glues and plastics, and any fillings, implants etc. Mercury amalgam fillings can get to surrounding animals, even into fish off the coast. From memory something like 20% of uk atmospheric dioxins are from cremation.

If burying, the formaldehyde and other embalming chemicals leech into the ground along with any accumulated toxins in the body, and can prevent proper decomposition for decades or more. Embalming that's completely unnecessary for the timescale of most burials. Mostly those chemicals are ugly, and little studied when put in the ground in scale. Yet are studied when added in small amounts as fire retardants or glues in furniture etc. Then you have the US using steel coffins in concrete lined graves!

It's quite the ugly rabbit hole once you descend and start looking into burial and cremation.

That's pretty much what we settled on, and for similar reasons. In time, just see forest, sometimes with flat local stone or wood plaques, without bleak rows of cemetery headstones. Far more uplifting and not even more expensive, surprisingly. Not as surprising was burial in managed woodland is a fairly common option when we looked into it, some planting a native tree in place of headstone.

Needless to say once we dug into how it's usually done, we found yet another industry that's become horribly eco unfriendly.

Pop out anything that someone else might be able to use and chuck me in the compost bin

Viking funeral pyre for me.

This story is making round a lot. I usually file it in the urban legends folder.

Two thoughts:

1. They really are no sugar in aboriginal societies? No fruit or carbs?

2. I know a handful of people who eat Western diets who have zero tooth decay.

Doesn’t seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull.

1. Significantly less. 2. That's great to hear.

To expand on (1.), modern cultivated fruit varieties are quite different from what wild fruits are seasonally available—for one thing, you're always competing with wild animals for a sugary, tasty snack.

Here's a somewhat fascinating article looking at both sides of this debate: https://deniseminger.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

The conclusion to me seems to be that unless you're in the tropics, you almost certainly be eating less fruit, and the fruit you'll eat will be much more varied and seasonal. A lot of the wild fruit you eat may have specific defenses (tannins, alkaloids, etc.) that discourage you from eating too much (the fruit's job is to make you spread and excrete its seeds, after all).

"Doesn’t seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull."

The confidence of people far away at a different time without any relevant knowledge to dismiss an experienced local on the ground based on flawed high-level logic never ceases to surprise.

It's the epitome of hacker news. Reddit also has this "armchair quarterbacking" effect, but it's significantly worse on HN, in my opinion.

A lot of the people here are knowledgeable—in specific domains. I think people forget that being an expert in one thing doesn't make you qualified to judge, understand, or discuss another domain in depth.

Case in point, the recent "tech that reduces sound by 94%" post that got upvoted here.

One of the most common instances of generalized experts weighing in on topics they're not actually experts in happens in politically-related posts here, although it usually only comes in the form of downvotes.

You can cite science and demographic facts while leaving out your own overt normative opinions, yet you will still get downvoted from both 'sides' who think they are being slighted if you don't give a clear opinion. Unfortunately this is the way scientific method-driven experts talk (and generally anyone who's into political science rather than political opinion) - but in this domain it really sets non-experts off for some reason.

The thing is, most people are taught at a young age that their political opinion matters a lot, which probably has something to do with generalized experts walking into this domain thinking they're already experts and getting quickly frustrated when they realize they're not, lashing out at the source of that frustration via downvotes.

Back in the day the responses to these kinds of topics used to be via comments, now it's almost always via drive-by downvotes. I used to bemoan the inane buzzword replies back in the forum days because they were typically boring and predictable, but they were still infinitely better than the downvote without comment that is the norm for this site (and even more common on reddit).

I don't actually read his comment as dismissive or confident, but more surprised and curious. There's nothing wrong with questioning other people's statements when they don't marry up with your own opinions.

Indeed. It was more intellectual curiosity.

You called the story bullshit in another comment, that’s not what most people say when they are intellectually curious.

It’s because the story sounds like bullshit.

I have no doubt that you can tell the age of a skull with a close inspection of the teeth. This story was an anthropologist looking at remains from several feet away and claiming that it’s aboriginal from the lack of dental decay.

I proposed a few exceptions to that rule. Certainly not a quip about the expertise of the anthropologist, but rather the accuracy of the story.

One of the benefits of being an expert in a particular field, is that you can take small parcels of evidence and formulate an accurate picture of a situation much faster than a layman with no prior experience in that field. I don't know the anthropologist in question, but I am sure she used a series of supporting evidence that was obvious to her trained eye as well as the teeth condition.

Ask any doctor or midwife who can look at an ultrasound image and tell you the sex of the baby while you are still staring at a smudgy grey moving image. Ask any accident investigator who can estimate the speed and trajectory of the vehicles while you are still looking for the skid marks.

I personally have spent over 25 years interacting on public message boards, and I am a domain expert enough that I can pick an armchair expert who has lots of perceived theoretical knowledge, but little or no real world knowledge, but still feels the need to espouse their opinion in order to get their dopamine hit of the day - all just from a quick glance at their post.

I agree it sounds like bullshit.

However, I have listened to a talk by a lady (she consults on murdered cadavers) who can tell which season a body died in by analyzing the teeth! Apparently there is a lot there.

That I can believe, assuming a detailed analysis in a lab. But snap judging from a distance? Cavities are more common in modern populations than before, but hardly omnipresent. I do find it an amusing thought that apparently my skeleton would be assigned a more distant past simply because I am filling free. :D

The more likely sign is not fillings, but acid damage, which softens teeth and cause biting and grinding to wear down the surface of the teeth. You can have no fillings and still have very noticeable acid-related damage.

It might be not that hard for someone who's literal job is examining skeletal remains.

Since when does an anecdote provide any proof? I thought exactly the same things as your parent poster. Carbs are sugar, especially if you chew long enough. This affects teeth. Combine this with a lack of toothbrushes and a lack of fluoride and it sounds like a recipe for tooth decay.

Also, people didn’t live as long as they do now. So less chance to have your teeth rotten. Furthermore: the skeletons might have been of people in their twenties with arguably better teeth than old people.

Lots of questions that this anecdote doesn’t answer and you dismiss critique as pretentious.

He most likely meant refined sugars.

Sugar is being added to most foods nowadays. The timeline of cheap refined sugar is the timeline of sugar addiction and tooth decay.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/06/tooth-...

Scientists examined the remains of 52 adults who had lived between roughly 12,000 and 13,000 B.C. and were buried in the cave. An astonishing 49 of them, or 94%, had cavities, which affected more than half of the surviving teeth.

By analyzing plant remains in the cave, Humphrey's team found that residents ate lots of a particularly sweet type of acorn, which becomes soft and sticky when cooked. They also ate wild oats and legumes. Such foods can lead to serious decay,

Yes, and wild oats and legumes don’t exactly seem like the exception in ancient diets.

Plus another link in this thread claims ancient fruits have different sugars that don’t cause decay.

Are you trying to imply that refined sugars do not cause an increase in tooth decay? Or that fruit sugar is similar to refined sugars?

Any ties with the sugar lobbby famous for lobbying the US government into blackmailing the WHO in increasing the amounts “healthy” sugar in their dietary guidelines?

"Refined sugar" is sugar in fruit. It is literally the same thing. That's how we get sugar in the first place - from plants. You are dealing with glucose, fructose, and sucrose in both cases.

Why was this downvoted? This is correct.

It’s not refined while it’s in the fruit. High content, but not refined.

Even with oranges which have very high sugar content, you cannot easily eat four oranges but you can drink their orange juice along with most of the sugar and none of the fiber.

The sugar lobby’s talking points steer the conversation toward equalizing refined and non refined sugars, and calories from refined sugars vs calories from non refined sugars.

I found this in depth lecture really enlightening

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

> Doesn’t seem like a great way to tell the age of a skull.

Going to take a guess and say that a brief glance at the teeth is probably not the _only_ age determination method they applied before determining their course of action.

and asked her how she could tell even from afar that these were not more current remains

Right, and then after making that initial assessment, I'm going to guess they didn't just stop walking, write out and sign the incident report and pull out the radio to let the station know that they were pretty much done here and there's nothing to worry about. No, I assume they walked up to it and got a more conclusive look at the body first.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a better example of classic HN-style "middlebrow dismissal" than this comment. I want to print it and frame it.

Thanks for sharing this story.

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