I recently visited the Peshtigo FireCemetary where there were 300+ unidentified bodies. One of the placards mentioned that bodies were so burnt that they could not tell the difference between men, woman and children.
Now obviously there isn’t going to be much dental records in 1871 (and they would have been burnt if there were any), but in 1871 could they ID men / women by hip measurement and age by skull suturing / wisdom teeth /whatever?
Obviously not enough to ID individuals (which really isn’t my question)
My question is when did the scieience get good enough / accepted enough to to general clasification of “recent” human bones (assuming fairly complete skeletons)
side question: Is it possible the fire was hot enough to destroy bone? - there is refences to sand melting to glass.
If the fire was hot enough to melt sand into glass, it’d be around 1600-2000° C, which, while it’s hot enough to burn bone, is also hot enough to burn everything else. There wouldn’t really be “remains” to speak of, except for the odd fragment of femur here and there. So sure, maybe that’s what they meant.
Given an *intact * adult pelvis, even I can tell you if it was male or female and I’ve only got about 3 credits worth of Anatomy. The question is really how soon did someone figure out the consistency of the male/female difference in pelvic angle, and I don’t know the answer to that. I suspect the answer lies somewhere north of DaVinci, though. Artists have known anatomy forever - for longer than doctors, in many cases.
But the fact that they couldn’t even identify which were children suggests to me that there were few, if any, intact skeletons to look at.
“ID” to the extent of determining gender, approximate height, and approximate age at death? Sure. Piece of cake. Have a relative you think might be one of the 300? If you have a photo and some basic statistics (height, gender, age) things could be narrowed down and, since “burnt beyond recognition” rarely means “cooked so thoroughly that no DNA survives” you could possibly make an ID that could stand up in court.
A long time ago. By the late 19th century enough was known about the human skeleton to generally classify one. That was the golden age of Anthropometry and any skeleton found was likely to get measured every which way and then tossed in a box in a museum.
These were not skeletons that got buried, but rotting piles of burnt flesh. Burn off enough superficial features and you can’t tell with a cursory glance if the body is one of a small man, large child, or woman. When you have 800 bodies to sort through and no refrigeration you aren’t going to give any one “crispy critter” more than a cursory glance. And the area around Peshtigo had more than its share of transients, like lumberjacks, with nobody who could recognize them, especially if the rest of their crew got killed or just left town.
Most likely not. As WhyNot mentioned, a fire that hot would result in a mass of disarticulated and fragmented bones. Further, systematic statistical examination of bones w.r.t. sex and age didn’t really didn’t start until after World War I (for age estimation) and in the 1950s (for sex determination). However, even with a complete adult pelvis, experts only have about a 95% accuracy rate (cite below)
Rogers, T., and S. Saunders
1995 Accuracy of sex determination using morphological traits of the human pelvis. Journal of Forensic Sciences 39:1047-56.
Systematic, maybe, but I’m looking into whether the knowledge existed in 1880 or 1890 to do a fairly good sort and will get back to you.
A firestorm like the Peshtigo Fire burned long and hot enough to do what you describe and more (an example here: “Lembk (Lamp, Lamke), Mrs. Charles - wife and five children died on a wagon, fleeing for safety, when one of his horses falling, he got out to help him up, and finally succeeding in doing so, and upon returning to the wagon found his family all dead. He finally reached a small brook near by, in which he lay until morning, when returning, he found the remains of his family and wagon entirely consumed.” And such utter destruction of their bodies can help explain why the total number of dead is unknown. However, I doubt that all of the unclaimed bodies were in that condition, nor that all of them were so burnt that an autopsy could not determine gender. Many people were killed by smoke inhalation or breathing superheated air and showed little other sign of having been in a fire. If nobody recognized them, let’s say they were coming in from their little house in the big woods, they’d end up as unknowns. My first link shows a girl who worked for the Davis family whose name was unknown and she’d also be an unknown. Even today, with all our technological and communication advantages, lots of bodies remain unidentified.
“Did the knowledge exist in 1871 to accurately assess age, gender, and stature from burnt skeletal remains of unknown origin?”
OR
“Would a person be able to identify the burnt remains of his deceased wife and children?”
If it is the former then I would say no except from some gross generalizations (i.e. tall vs. short, child vs. adult, and probably nothing at all regarding gender). With a large population (300+ individuals) in a small area it would not be possible to determine identity.
If it is the latter then of course the person could. Particularly if, as you pointed out, the individual knew where (spatially) they had died and, as you also pointed out, if they weren’t burned beyond recognition.
Tanx! I probably won’t get famous with the next one (due out the 26th) since I, y’know, didn’t do much besides be a pest and spend a day or two researching something and coming up dry, but I’m happy to have had ONE international bestseller!
My question is not particularly practical – I doubt saying that Jane Doe #17 was in her mid-thirties and was 5’ 2" would help much in IDing since there were probably many other mid thirties 5’ 2" women. And many people were not at home (one man sent his wife to the boarding house across the river, hoping the river would provide a barrier – it didn’t)
My question was when was general IDing of charred bodies done at least occasionally.
That’s my assumption and I’m looking into it. Not that I really KNOW anything about such stuff, but I have people. Some of whom are still willing to speak to me, eventually.
N9IWP, the impracticality and what-if-ness of your question is what has me going at it a “could the knowledge be assembled to do a halfway decent job in 1871 or before 1900?” answer, not a “Young Franz “Indiana” Boas and Aleš “Tonto” Hrdlička” to the rescue answer.
That’s what I assumed as well. In 1871, the only attempts (that I know of) to correlate skeletal data with the living person all used simple ratios to determine stature. The earliest use of regression analysis (also to determine stature) was done by Karl Pearson in 1898. Age estimation didn’t begin to be examined scientifically until after WWI by staff at Case Western Reserve University (Bass 1995:12) when skeletons with known histories were analyzed in order to document sequential changes throughout the skeleton’s life. The earliest attempt to assign gender to a skeleton (that I can find) is from 1905 (Dwight 1905) and based the analysis on the diameter of the femur head and humeral head. However, it is important to note that skeletal sex determination is only applicable to adult skeletons. Subadult skeletal material does not have sufficient differences to accurately determine gender as the secondary characteristics (upon which the determination is made) do not manifest themselves until puberty (Bass 1995:25).
So, if in 1871 you handed a trained medical doctor a basket of burnt bones (s)he would likely be able to haphazard a guess as to how tall the person was and the general size of the individual. (S)he would also be able to determine whether the individual was an adult or juvenile. No determination would be able to be made regarding gender.
Bass, William
1995 *Human Osteology:A laboratory and field manual (4th ed.). * Special Publication No. 2 of the Missouri Archaeological Society.
Dwight, T.
1905 The size of the articular surfaces of the long bones as characteristics of sex as an anthropological study. American Journal of Anatomy 4:19-32.
Pearson, Karl.
1898 On the reconstruction of the stature of prehistoric races. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 192A:169-244.
I will defer to your better and more accessible library for the purposes of this thread, but since the pelvic differences between adult males and females are usually obvious (see here for some Victorian drawings) there might be a reason for no papers on it. Not that I believe for a second there aren’t volumes of papers from the 19th century full of measurements of human pelvic bones because it combines two Victorian obsessions: measuring stuff and naughty bits. Dwight’s 1905 study of long bones looked at a more subtle difference that can be used when no pelvic bones are available or to back up a conclusion based on a pelvis.
I have excavated dozens of skeletons (both articulated and disarticulated as well as cremated) and I can tell you that the differences are rarely (if ever) “obvious.” The cheat sheet I use has 17 morphological traits for determining gender. Multivariate skeletal analysis of the pelvis uses 34 measurements and 10 morphological characteristics. It is hardly obvious.
The illustrations from Gray’s are at the extreme edges of male/female variation. And why wouldn’t they be? There isn’t any sense in doing two illustrations which look the same.
Then I will defer to your greater knowledge and experience, too. I’m easy. All I know (about nearly anything) is what I read and that reading says that, while it isn’t always the “piece of cake” I described, with adults it’s fairly easy to make an educated guess. (Note that one of my MANY weasel words in this thread is “adult,” since I understand sexing the skeletons of children runs from “we can’t be sure” to “it’s anybody’s guess.”) And ain’t them pictures from Gray’s Anatomy doozies? Yes, they are from the far ends of the spectrum (I think the female pelvis originally belonged to the second Frau Bach because giving birth wouldn’t be the problem as much as keeping young Johann Christian from popping out if she laughed too hard).
and the pelvic dimorphism was pronounced in the several skeletons I’ve examined I’m fairly satisfied with my statements. As long as I can keep in all of my weasel words, that is. And I accept that there are outliers that make up the 5% that Rogers and Saunders say folks miss and assume there would be many more in that grave in Peshtigo who were too young or whose skeletons were too damaged to make a good estimate. But I am also confident that quick autopsies when the bodies were fresh could’ve cleared up some of the confusion and that with many others the lack of identification was simply because nobody looked at those bodies knew the people to identify them.
dropzone, please don’t misunderstand me…I’m not claiming that one cannot positively ID gender based on skeletal analysis. In fact, as Rogers and Saunders pointed out, it can be done with about a 95% accuracy rate with a complete pelvis. I would say that is pretty good!
My point, rather, is that the ability to positively ID the remains is based on loads of data which have been squeezed through the statistical wringer numerous times and refined to a point where we have a 95% accuracy rate. These data were not available in 1871 and therefore any guess as to the gender of the individual would be just that - a guess. Obviously, some of the outliers would be identified fairly easily but those would be the exception rather than the rule. The variations of most of the individuals would be subtle enough that positive identification would only be possible through use of techniques that wouldn’t be made available for at least another 50 years.
And until I can find some data to support my contention that the information was available to anthropologists in the late 19th century we’ll have to put this on hold. Which is not a concession of defeat!
All I know (about nearly anything) is what I read and that reading says that, while it isn’t always the “piece of cake” I described, with adults it’s fairly easy to make an educated guess. (Note that one of my MANY weasel words in this thread is “adult,” since I understand sexing the skeletons of children runs from “we can’t be sure” to “it’s anybody’s guess.”) And ain’t them pictures from Gray’s Anatomy doozies? Yes, they are from the far ends of the spectrum (I think the female pelvis originally belonged to the second Frau Bach because giving birth wouldn’t be the problem as much as keeping young Johann Christian from popping out if she laughed too hard).
And I accept that there are outliers that make up the 5% that Rogers and Saunders say folks miss and assume there would be many more in that grave in Peshtigo who were too young or whose skeletons were too damaged to make a good estimate. But I am also confident that quick autopsies when the bodies were fresh could’ve cleared up some of the confusion and that with many others the lack of identification was simply because nobody looked at those bodies knew the people to identify them.