The Backbone of Europe: Health, Diet, Work and Violence over Two Millennia

Richard H. Steckel · Clark Spencer Larsen · Charlotte A. Roberts · Joerg Baten

nov 2018 · Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology Libro 80 · Cambridge University Press

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Using human skeletal remains, this volume traces health, workload and violence in the European population over the past 2,000 years. Health was surprisingly good for people who lived during the early Medieval Period. The Plague of Justinian of the sixth century was ultimately beneficial for health because the smaller population had relatively more resources that contributed to better living conditions. Increasing population density and inequality in the following centuries imposed an unhealthy diet - poor in protein - on the European population. With the onset of the Little Ice Age in the late Middle Ages, a further health decline ensued, which was not reversed until the nineteenth century. While some aspects of health declined, other attributes improved. During the early modern period, interpersonal violence (outside of warfare) declined possibly because stronger states and institutions were able to enforce compromise and cooperation. European health over the past two millennia was hence multifaceted in nature.

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Richard H. Steckel is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University. He is a pioneer in blending human biology, anthropometrics, and measures from skeletal remains for insights into health and well-being. He has published over 120 articles, including two books with Cambridge.

Clark Spencer Larsen is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Ohio State University, and member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the last 10,000 years of human evolution, with particular emphasis on the history of health and lifestyle. He is the author of Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton (Cambridge, 2nd edition, 2015).

Charlotte A. Roberts is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Durham. She has studied and interpreted human remains from archaeological sites for the past thirty years. She is specifically interested in exploring the interaction of people with their environments in the past through patterns of health and disease, taking a multidisciplinary and multi-method approach.

Joerg Baten is a Professor of Economic History at Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany, and Editor-in-Chief of Economics and Human Biology. His research focuses on the effects of nutrition, disease and violence on human development. He has authored or co-edited seven books, including A History of the Global Economy (Cambridge, 2016), an easily comprehensible overview on economic history of all world regions in the last 500 years.