Medieval Cambridge skeletons reveal injuries to manual labourers | Hacker News Reader

Medieval Cambridge skeletons reveal injuries to manual labourers

bbc.com

71 pointspepys100 comments

Interested in how common broken bones are today, I stumbled across this study:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12111017/

> There were 6451 men and 6936 women followed for a median of 3.0 years. During this time there were 140 incident limb fractures in men and 391 in women.

Whereas OP's archaeological study had:

> Fractures were more prevalent in males (40%, n = 57/143) than females (26%, n = 25/95).

Age, maybe? Primary cause for fractures nowadays is osteoporosis, which AFAIK is more serious to women after menopause. Primary cause historically was accidents, with the opposite distribution.

Sport? I mean almost all the people I know had a broken bone or joint issue because of sport and then you have domestic accident.

For instance in Switzerland each year you have 550k non-professional accident (declared one to your employer) for 8.5M inhabitants. (Ref: SUVA annual report but only available in GE and FR)

Why is osteoporosis so prevalent in modern age? Diet?

Osteoporosis is (largely) an old person's disease, and people are now living long enough to get it.

People just live longer.

That, and like many cancers, just a larger number of people living long enough to fall victim to it. Women developing what are usually postmenopausal issues more or less requires living to and through menopause. (Yes, old people got to be nearly as old as they do now, but getting to be old was much less of a sure thing.)

Theory time - it could be due to reduced natural Vitamin D from lower sun exposure, a mostly sedentary life, combined with less life long physical labor (especially for women, who are severely under-represented in construction and heavy industry, which is about the only places you'd get that kind of exercise in modern society).

Lifting weight helps bones get stronger, and Vitamin D is an essential nutrient in proper bone building.

100 years ago even, most people lived and worked on farms in the US (and many other places), now it's single digit percentages - and many of them spend it driving vehicles and similar less physical labor.

> especially for women, who are severely under-represented in construction and heavy industry

Seems an odd thing to mention/focus on. Any specific reason for including this?

Because women have dramatically higher fracture rates due to osteoporosis (and lower bone mineral density in general) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11063899/], the only known way (outside of some, last I heard, unproven clinical vibration treatments) to get stronger bones is to lift heavy things while having proper nutrition, and about the only occupational exposure you're going to get to lifting heavy things on a regular basis is those industries?

At least as of 2007 those industries (and related industries) were 78% male [https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2007/06/art2full.pdf]

There is also a similar visible skew in the power lifting, olympic lifting, or weight lifting communities for those into it recreationally.

It used to be we all spent more time lifting heavy things. However, post WW2 that has rapidly declined.

So one way to reduce or reverse this is if we ALL lifted heavy things more often. From a risk reduction perspective, that seems to be especially valuable for women?

> So one way to reduce or reverse this is if we ALL lifted heavy things more often. From a risk reduction perspective, that seems to be especially valuable for women?

Depends; women might be much more prone to injury from lifting heavy things.

Why do you suggest that?

A lot of women I’ve lifted with were proportionately stronger than most men I’ve lifted with, injured less often, and more capable of lifting heavy things than I was. The person who taught me to deadlift was a ~140lb woman who could pull 330lb off the floor with her baby strapped to her. She was exceptional, but anecdotally I’d say women can lift whatever they want without any added risk of injury over male counterparts.

You're seeing the statistical problem of "restriction of range". Weightlifting women are one of the worst possible classes to try to generalize weightlifting ability from.

You'd have to compare across a lot more fine-grained than medieval vs modern (which, in a historical sense, covers the Renaissance through to, well, now).

* It's only the last couple of hundred years that a significant body of people doing work that does not have a large physical component - bone density is heavily influenced by stressing the bones regularly through exercise.

* It's only the last hundred years that childbirth-related mortality for women has plummeted. A lot of women would die in childbirth. Early industrial revolution era saw some parts of Europe have 20-25% of women die of childbirth. Now it's an extraordinary event.

* Following from that, menopause dramatically reduces bone density for women; one reason HRT was such a popular thing in the med-to-late 20th century was that it was seen as a panacea for removing the worst effects of menopause. Unfortunately it creates a lot of issues, as well.

* Diets change dramatically. Medieval people ate (generally) much less meat and sugar, but a lot of fresh (when in season) vegetables, some fruit, and a lot of grains. Early industrial food quality plummets as people move to urban areas without the ability to grow their own food. Rickets are a huge, widespread plague on urban poor (places like Glascow had rickets endemic well into the mid 20th century) for most of the modern era.

That's just wopk and diet. Consider that the averge medieval person walked everywhere, early moderns likewise, and only from the 19th century onwards did rail, cars, and so on see people getting about without considerable exercise being involved.

I find it difficult to compare these two sets of figures considering you're looking for fractures at any point in life on the skeletons, and for the study, the people were only followed for a median of 3 years (no need to say 3.0 for median).

And while they were apparently counting fractures that had healed, I assume that's an imperfect exercise for relatively minor, clean fractures from many years prior.

I assume a pretty good portion of today's population gets a fracture on a limb at some point in their lives.

It's off topic but there may indeed be a need to say 3.0 rather than 3 for median - the use of a median is orthogonal to the choice of precision.

Consider the median of: 2.9, 3.0, 3.1 years.

Key info missing from your comment:

> Men and women aged 50-79 years were recruited from population registers in 31 European centers.

They followed older people for 3 years. It is well-known that menopause causes osteoporosis, which makes women more at risk of bone fractures in older age. And in fact this is a study on osteoporosis...

Men have had much more dangerous lives throughout history protecting women. I don't find this to surprising, although it is interesting to note.

I don’t think it’s to do with protecting women. Males die more and from all sorts of things, even before birth and as infants. In terms of violent death, there is plenty that is unrelated to protecting women.

“Men's higher unintentional injury, suicide, and homicide mortality rates are observed in all age groups in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. The sole exception is for homicide of children under the age of 15 years in low- and high-income countries, where the rates for girls are similar to or higher than those for boys.”

I’m not sure how you would record whether a death was related to protecting a woman?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222499/

In my mind, things like fighting in war, working high-risk jobs, etc, all fall under protecting reproductive resources through history.

Things like suffocation, drowning, and fire are a bit harder to understand... but I believe they are derived from a high-risk mentality that men have gained as a result of this protector status.

Ignoring the radical changes that we've seen in the last 50 years, if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly.

> if we sent women to war, we wouldn't have any children. Any nation that did that was wiped off the face of the earth rather quickly.

If gender rolls were reversed wouldn’t be many examples where the death toll was high enough for this to occur.

In Britain in the 1921 census there were 1,209 single women aged 25 to 29 for every 1,000 men. In 1931 50% were still single, and 35% of them did not marry while still able to bear children.

After the war there were about 40% fewer single French men for every unmarried woman, compared to before.

Devastating loses but nowhere near enough to threaten the existence of a country. Post WW2 Germany and Russia would also be grim examples. It is of note that the 20th century was the first time that deaths from actual enemy action exceeded deaths from disease during war.

https://qz.com/389781/think-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-now-t...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_women

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem

Perhaps we can increase my "50" years to "200" years. For the vast majority of history, having less men was considered eugenic and a good thing.

In Islamic societies, men having multiple wives was quite rare, with the vast majority of marriages being monogamous.

It wasn't driven by having less men. It was driven by the upper class wanting more sex.

It also turned out to be disastrous for society, and most of the Islamic world has outlawed or severly restricted the practice as it leads to huge social problems.

The fact is that war has never been a large driver of casualties in these societies, outside of WW1 and WW2 which are the two exceptions and really don't prove your point. Wars were never fought to protect women, and most men died of disease and accidents, not war.

Polygyny was not restricted to Islamic societies though, and was a common occurence accross many societies. It was always restricted to a limited amount of men of course, as only the most successful/powerful/whatever could afford it. It does have heavy social consequences, but those might or might not be an issue for a given society, as some were quite successful (ie surviving for a long time, no moral judgement here).

I certainly agree, the analysis applies to all other societies, but the link in the post was specifically about Islamic societies.

My main point of contention was that it wasn't a widespread practice and wasn't motivated by a lack of men.

> Devastating loses but nowhere near enough to threaten the existence of a country

After WW1 the average height of a french soldier dropped by an inch or two (don't remember the exact value). This was attributed to the slaughter of the fit men. It also became fashionable to marry old men and foreigners.

I know in Germany after both wars there was the same effect on marriages, but I don't know about the height.

People do not fight for the protection of reproductive resources. The peaceful way birth rates fell around the world these days is proof of that.

People fought protecting material resources. Reproductive resources were only useful insofar as they help you produce more subordinates to generate more material resources. In feudalism this meant that reproductive resources were very important, but in slavery and capitalism it isn't really the case.

Given the realities of military engagements in Feudal Europe - and the rather small army sizes - its not true that sending women to war would cause a fatal decrease in the birth rate, at all.

I'm speaking of evolutionary biases, not conscious motives... in all species, the men go to war. Female lions do hunt, but they don't fight.

What you are saying is simply wrong. Females participate in war in many species, including humans and lions. Female lions will often defend their pride to prevent the attacking lions from killing their cubs, and similarly in humans women often fight in defensive wars.

Evolutionary biases are also essentially irrelevant in how societies are structured. The structures of societies are very intentional and based on material reality, not mere biases.

Generally, men have mostly done the fighting, especially in wars of aggression. The reasons for these are material, as men are often better at fighting. It's not to protect women. When it's useful and makes sense for women to fight, then women fight.

Interesting, do you have any examples of female warrior societies? The wikipedia article seems to start with WW1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military

And even then, they were support, not infantry.

Women have been in support and combat positions in war since antiquity. Women buried with weapons were found in Kazakhstan in antiquity, otherwise quite a few Chinese armies had women in infantry positions (most often manning defences). See : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_warfare

This generally doesn't happen unless either the society is quite rich but lacks strong men, or cases of emergency, or if there is surplus of land and food, because raising armies is very costly, and as a result it doesn't make sense not to send the strongest fighters possible as it is expensive to outfit them and to maintain production at home.

Nowadays, women are proving extremely competent as fighter pilots as their bodies are better at withstanding G-Forces, but in classical infantry where there is a large strength requirement again it doesn't make much sense.

> as their bodies are better at withstanding G-Forces

Likely coming from being shorter. The heart doesn't have to push the blood as far uphill.

Women do indeed fight, but not until it gets desperate.

That is indeed part of why women are better at withstanding g-forces. The other is lower bodymass.

It's true that women generally don't fight until it's desperate historically. I explained why in the comment you replied to.

The miniseries Spartacus (recommended!) decided to pit women gladiators against male ones. Both the men and women were obviously highly fit and ripped. Try as they might, the filmmakers simply couldn't make it look like a fair fight.

This is indeed true. That's why women in combat roles historically did not engage in such roles. Instead, women often manned defences, were light archers, and so on.

>Evolutionary biases are also essentially irrelevant in how societies are structured. The structures of societies are very intentional and based on material reality, not mere biases.

Evolutionary biases are fundamentally relevant to the way society is structured. Historically more violent behavior in males has always been very adaptive as the rewards are far greater.

Evolutionary biases simply aren't relevant structurally. While men do exhibit more violent behaviour, it's been since the invention of the state that violence became a tool and not a concern. The vast majority of violence has for a long time been organized, calculated state or political violence, not instinct-driven agression. The latter still exists, but pales in comparison.

Put another way, if you took almost any society today and made everyone women, you would not see a major decrease in violence, as the vast majority of violence done serves structural and material reasons.

While violence is not always a tool, it is an evolutionary strategy. Before the advent of the state, it was already a tool, or could be at least. It, and other adaptive behaviors still hold some sway on us, and our societies are still shaped by them. We've become more complex, and cultural evolution influences as well, but you cannot cross this a defunct relic of our history.

I agree with your second point though.

> People do not fight for the protection of reproductive resources. The peaceful way birth rates fell around the world these days is proof of that.

People have fought for a number of reasons, material resources AND reproductive resources are usually key to those. Historically, raiding for woman and resources has been a constant. A big tribe is a safe tribe, more women is key. Even in modern times, you can see the pressure in expensionist/aggressive societies for women to have more children.

Again, I certainly agree. Reproductive resources are, however, ultimately a means to an end. Material resources and power are the driving force.

Fighting for reproductive resources is, however, an outmoded concern. While some states are fighting falling birthrates, none have went to war to acquire more women in recent times. And the reason why states are pursuing population is, again, material.

While this is true, I think you're forgetting about all of the ways men could be injured that don't involve actively protecting women.

Need to muscle some livestock? Probably mans job.

Need to cut trees? Probably mans job.

Need to stalk wild game through the forest? Probably mans job.

Need to lift heavy things that could injure you? Probably mans job.

A teenager being too aggressive and overdoing some activity? Probably a man.

It's not hard to see all the ways men could be injured by being men, that doesn't involve protecting women from predators.

I believe those are considered the man's job so the woman remains intact.

I'm going to be honest, your comments seem like they have an air of... condescension? Towards either other commenters and/or women.

Not trying to be condescending to women, but we are a sexually dimorphic species due to the heavy costs that women bear in reproduction (ie they are unable to fight for 9 months, and they can only reproduce ~annually, whereas a man can reproduce ~daily)

A lot of those things would actually reduce your chance of getting fractures from low bone density, along with the increased risk of fractures from accidents.

What about the men who were living dangerously by assaulting women? What do you think men were protecting women from? If you're going to talk about war, you have to talk about offense as well as defense, and some significant percentage of warriors were injured/killed while attacking, not defending, and then the survivors went on to rape and pillage. Some of these men were taking resources, not protecting them. For some men to be "protectors" means others are aggressors. If men lead more dangerous lives due to war and violence, you've got to consider how much of that danger they created themselves.

"Protection" that involves attacking others first is pretty questionable from a moral and practical standpoint. "No first strike" policies for nuclear weapons, for instance, would go a long way to making the world safer.

You can pick and choose words, but ultimately I'm talking about genetic expansion. This has nothing to do with morals, it's the will to power.

Seems like a similar ballpark given historical life expectancy

If I'm reading this right, fractures are actually more prevalent these days?

There isn't enough information to be sure - we need to know more about the life expectancy of the medieval subjects and the likelihood of multiple fractures. Eyeballing it suggests yes, but within a factor of 2 either way.

Note though that the modern study involved older adults (50-79) who I would guess are more likely to get fractures: osteoporosis and weakened joints outweigh the increased risk from physical activity of younger people.

In reading about this, my first thought was... in 300 years will they be digging up our current cemeteries?

The answer is a resounding 'very possible'. Although there are federal laws on the books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_ethics#Preserva...

There was a modern attempt at relocating a cemetery in 1988 that ultimately failed for political reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloise_Cemetery#Present_situat...

And there are things like this in the Texas State Code that give clearance for eminent domain actions: https://casetext.com/statute/texas-codes/water-code/title-4-...

So don't buy a plot in a prospective dam/reservoir area in Texas if you want to be undisturbed for centuries.

In France, burial « concessions » are 10 years renewable to 30 years. I’m not sure what options are in case your family wants to keep your grave longer.

Is it indefinite duration in USA?

I personally have no idea. US culture is rather averse to discussing matters of death so this is all new. My brief searching around looks like this is tied to however you purchase the plot and the terms set with the cemetery itself and if they expire, they just bury someone a foot or two above the previous plot owner after removing the headstone....

At least here in Ontario, Canada, cemetery plots are infinite duration, and the land is classified for that purpose forever. There are plenty of little cemetery plots attached to old 19th century churches in downtown Toronto, now surrounded by skyscrapers.

I think it's the same in the USA.

Does it really matter if you are dead, everyone who ever knew you is dead, and everyone that was told about you is dead?

I don't believe the burial grounds should just be disrespected and all the bones dumped in the trash, but if 300 years from now scientist want to research an aspect of our lives to further humanity it seems like the dead shouldn't be trying to hamper that.

I'd even be fine if the land was even used for building development so long as the removal process is similar to an archaeological dig and it is very easy for charitable groups to stake a claim to maintain the grounds and pay taxes on it. From an American perspective, I'm thinking of Native American religious burial sites, slave burial sites, and other sites that may have historical significance but were not allowed to be maintained properly.

Took me a while to find the referenced paper [0]. Way more detail (of course) but also accessible.

0 - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24225

The article boils down to: "We can see that ordinary working folk had a higher risk of injury compared to the friars and their benefactors or the more sheltered hospital inmates" (ie. 44% compared to 32%/27% having bone fractures).

Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising.

I guess most research shouldn't be surprising, otherwise there'd be an eureka every day

There's certainly value in their finding. My comment was more targeted at the usual HN audience perhaps expecting an intellectually stimulating story.

It's important to have data to back our unsurprising assumptions. Lots of unsurprising assumptions have turned out to be false.

Indeed. Relatedly, here's Popular Science's list of articles in the category "Science Confirms The Obvious": https://www.popsci.com/tags/science-confirms-obvious/

I’d be more interested in a list called “Science Disproves the Obvious”. Anyone got one laying around?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconception... is about the best I know of.

This some fantastic reading. Some insightful, some hilarious: "Steak tartare was not invented by Mongol warriors who tenderized meat under their saddles."

Maybe a confusion of tartar the sauce with Tatars the central Asian nomads?

There’s possibly something there though, even if the steak tartar version is incorrect. Bret Deveraux claims the aim was to preserve meat into a kind of jerky: “On the move, meat could be placed between the rider’s saddle and the horse’s back – the frequent compression of riding, combined with the salinity of the horse’s sweat would produce a dried, salted jerky that would keep for a very long time.”[1]

His stuff is very well sourced, but also he’s self-admittedly talking outside his area of expertise there. So who knows.

[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/12/11/collections-that-dothraki-hord...

This is the first time I hear of this (https://xkcd.com/1053/).

I had always assumed they had the same etymology. It didn't help that in Spanish all of these words maintain the 'r' between the 'a' and 't': tártaro, ra, Tártaro, Tartaria.

Here there are 3 different etymologies: https://dle.rae.es/t%C3%A1rtaro and here there's another one: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauce_tartare

Although I don't know if the Wikipedia article should be trusted, since the English version one (Tartar sauce) states: "The word Tartar is a Turkic word that is the name of Tatar people."

Huh! Also funny that the French wiki is so much more extensive. The quote from the English version is the complete section!

Seems like a western adaptation of tatziki or tarator sauce, plus some orientalist confusion over who to call “tartars”. Interesting stuff!

Just because it isn't surprising doesn't mean it isn't interesting.

No, it doesn't. But it is very likely that one thing comes from the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_(emotion)

Perhaps for some here (including myself) this data helps imagine a more detailed approximation of what life was like there in that time period.

I don't think that this quote is what the article boils down to. IMHO the key information is rather: ""However, severe trauma was prevalent across the social spectrum."

At all levels they found a significant number of skeletons with bone fractures.

Yes, the injury rate may be similar, but the sources of these injuries are likely not. Amongst the ruling classes, horses were the danger. Ride a horse and you will break more bones than the guy who walks to work. Be a friar working in a hospital, not toiling in the fields nor riding horses, and your fracture rate would be much lower.

But your risk of bacterial infection probably skyrockets

Also violence, but in different forms.

For lower classes, regular street brawls will produce a lot of injuries. Upper class people will get into some street violence, but the presence of retinues will drastically reduce their incidence. On the other hand, for upper classes (but not monks) war and training for war will produce a ton of injuries, many fatal. Learning to fence and joust are very dangerous activities even in modern times.

>> Learning to fence and joust are very dangerous activities even in modern times.

Horses. Even today, horses are profoundly dangerous. Go to any hospital warn dealing with neck injuries. Young men fall off motorcycles, and so are generally a little older (16+). Young girls break their necks falling off horses. That particular fall (head first off a horse) is horrible. The neck takes all the load. Helmets protect the skull, not the neck. Obama once said that if he had sons there would be a conversation about them playing football. If I had daughters, they would not ride horses.

I’ll also mention that fencing used to be wildly dangerous to train in. When I learned to fence (Italian school longsword) we practiced with plastic swords and lacrosse gloves. Compared to wood swords with leather gloves this is an incredible safety improvement, and still we broke fingers from time to time. Even modern longsword fencing helms[0] (sport fencing helms can’t handle the abuse) are much tougher thanks to the presence of pre-drilled plate which provides better visibility without reduced protection[1].

0 - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4a/15/22/4a1522079ba2951466fb... This type is necessary if you wish to practice with steel swords, among other protective equipment. Steel can cave in regular fencing masks.

1 - Against cutting blows, which is the main issue in practice. Such a plate would be disastrous in actual war, since it would guarantee that any arrow making contact would “bite” rather than deflecting.

Every time I see an evil comic book-style villain with a scared face I am reminded that that look is based in realty. Pre-war, many well-to-do Germans took part in a style of fencing that resulted in regular injuries to the face. A scared face was a badge of status. There were several prominent WWII leaders with facial scars not from battle but from fraternal fencing organizations. A few years later and the comic book supervillains had scared faces too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_fencing

Interesting. When I took modern foil fencing classes, it wasn't dangerous in the slightest. The training foils (the long thin bendy swords that people usually think of when they think of fencing) are extremely flexible and have a button on the tip. You score a point by pushing that button against your opponent in a score zone of their body. You wear an electrified vest over your torso with a long wire leading back to the score machine, and when the opponent's sword tip touches your vest it completes an electric circuit. If that circuit is completed at the same time the opponent's foil tip button is depressed, they score a point. Both people have full cage facemasks, and there's almost zero chance of injury short of tripping.

Epee fencing, on the other hand, uses a heavier, stiffer sword, so when you poke somebody it can bruise.

Sabre fencing is the third modern fencing style, and allows you to score points with the blade (slashing) instead of just the point as with foil and epee. I've never done it but have heard it is the most physical style of the three.

This photo is of an epee match, but displays the still considerable flexibility of the weapon and the electrification wires that trail behind each combatant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89p%C3%A9e#/media/File:Fin...

It’s worth mentioning how much heavier and more energetic a longsword is compared to modern sport fencing weapons. A fencing saber weighs 500g (~1.1lbs) by regulation. Longswords on the other hand tend to weigh in the 3-4lb range based on the size of the fencer. Longswords are also relatively inflexible in the cutting direction to avoid a “whipping” effect, although they’ll flex on the thrust for safety.

For comparison’s sake here[0] is a very high quality practice fencing blade in a historically correct style. The weird shape is to help maintain the correct balance after the edge and point have been thickened to avoid injury.

We didn’t really go for point based scoring, since we were attempting to replicate a historical fencing school. In actual fights it is incredibly common for both combatants to fatally injure each other in an exchange, so we recognized the idea of dual hits where both combatants were struck. With both steel and plastic weapons the impacts are loud enough to not require any special detection equipment.

[0] - http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/maestro/sword-pra...

Melanie Reid [0] is a journalist and experienced horse rider who broke her neck and back in 2010 aged 53 [0]. She now writes a weekly article ('Spinal Column') that describes her continuing experiences of being tetraplegic. Very insightful concerning the resultant life-shattering injuries.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Reid

> Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising.

Validating assumptions is useful science.

yeah, but it's also been published on the bbc and posted here.

> Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising.

Yes! who cares about the lives of such lowly peasants.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Can't say much for hospital inmates but, bear in mind that friars in medieval Europe often had their days filled with plenty of hard physical labour as well, and often tended to farm plots for the benefit of their monasteries and church lands with lots of their own sweaty work. It was not what we would today consider a sedentary job at all. Though yes, a labourer would have been much more likely to suffer injuries regardless... One good fictional account of medieval life among all classes: Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet. Wonderful reading and realistically depicted in most ways.

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What did you think the % of bone fractures would be before you read the article?

I for found the gender difference quite surprising. I would not have imagined at the bottom levels of an agrarian society that there was much difference in the risks men and women faced.

> I for found the gender difference quite surprising.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. Could you provide the relevant quote?

^F "male"

> Across all sites the team found fractures were more common in male remains (40%) than female (26%)

I wonder how that ratio compares to now. I would assume that men (especially teenage/young adult men) are still more likely to suffer injuries (due to higher risk tolerance/attraction, in addition to continued workplace differences).

Men are ~93% of workplace fatality in XXIst century, both in USA and France for which I’ve seen the figures, although it’s only 450 deaths in France. It is on upwards trend for women (very recent trend, probably equalization of work) and downwards trend for men (has been on the decrease since WWII).

Specifically, I'm interested in what proportion of people have (at the point of death) had a bone fracture at some point.

I would assume that workplace fatality has been dropping (in line with ~all other forms of non-age-related fatality), but a look back through my mind-palace of anecdotal evidence suggests that a) more of the young men I knew than young women have broken bones and b) not far off 30% of the people I know, in (roughly speaking) the most economically privileged class in world history have broken bones at some point. What I'm curious about is the data to back up the anecdote.

This is not really surprising. Daily tasks were usually quite distinct between men and women.

And this is still the case to this day. The 10 most dangerous jobs in the US are male dominated.

But why? I'd expect across most societies historically for males to engage in more physically stressful work.

Not to undermine the value of women's work across that span, of course - but I'm genuinely surprised at your surprise.

A fun part about this is, forced labour for men remained legal until 1957’s UN treaty. Forced labour was abolished by the ILO treaty of 1930 but had a specific exclusion at Article 11, to exclude men 17-to-49 who didn’t have official or familial responsibilities.

ILO 1930 PDF: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangk...

You hear that Uber eats riders? you peasants, you! You too can make the news in just under 1,000 years, after you've fallen into a swamp (with your body staying preserved), after splitting your head on a rock, after going 30mph around a corner with an about-to-blow tire and a huge 8-person 'late' order in your painfully overburdened backpack, and lastly, after having been exhausted and worn out from the consecutive 60-hour weeks you've been making as a 'freelancer'...

Or just disappear while trying to find a place to pee.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25983785

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