TRANSITIONS · The skeletal effects of historical transitions in lifestyle
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-09-02 → 2021-09-01
- EU contribution
- €212,934
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The skeletal effects of historical transitions in lifestyle
During life, the distribution of cortical bone is influenced by loading history and bone remodelling seems to be significantly associated with high-frequency daily action. TRANSITIONS explored the skeletal adaptions in distinctive recent human groups characterized by different loading history, age and body size. In fact, understanding how different lifestyles affect skeletal form is crucial to reconstruct physical activity behaviour in past human populations. In addition, the detailed study of a wide collection of recent individuals returns important information to understand how diet, a sedentary lifestyle and longevity affect skeletal form with useful implications for musculoskeletal health. This is important for society because scientists have focussed on the analysis of long bone morphology to study how mechanical loadings impact on skeletal form, since the foundation of biomechanics. This has relevance to understanding how our lifestyles influence or skeletal health, which might allow novel insights into the lives of past populations and have value in predicting the prospects of fracture with aging in modern society. In an aging society, these questions become even more relevant. This study provides new insights and new tools for future studies. The shaft of long bones is commonly analysed on a few levels (i.e., mid-shaft). One of the aim of TRANSITIONS is to overcome this issue providing a new software capable to analyse the entire diaphyseal cortical thickness processing multiple cross-sections along the entire length of the shaft. Beside to the methodological innovation, the usage of an extensive collection of recent deceased individuals with known loading history allows the overall objective of gaining greater understanding of how lifestyle, age and body mass affect bone remodelling during the life.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
In the last 10 millennia humans have changed the way we live, moving from mobile hunter-gathering to farming and the urban living we are most familiar with today. Since 2008 more than 50% of the global population live in cities. But what effect has this had on our bodies? Understanding how we have adapted to past transitions is vital to interpreting archaeological remains and to anticipate the physical effects of this ongoing modern transition to a highly technologically dependent urban species. The goal of TRANSITIONS is to develop the research capacities of the European Fellow, in his broad area of interest in human variation and evolution. It will provide advanced training in the context and study of the skeletal consequences of changes in lifestyle and activity through a series of defined objectives for resaerch and training that compare skeletal form and function within and between past populations with different subsistence and lifestyle strategies; hunter gatherers, agriculturalists and urban dwellers. The results will provide new insights into how different lifestyles and their functional consequences affect skeletal form. Multiple factors impact on the skeleton, yet there is a discernible, consistent trend with increasing modernity towards ‘gracilization’. Thus, despite the multifactorial causes, to what extent are skeletal effects similar or different between transitions to agriculture and to urban or other ways of life? The answer will reflect how flexible our responses are to similar and different pressures and the extent to which we can use knowledge of historical transitions to interpret archaeological material and anticipate current and future ones. As well as providing advanced training by applying cutting-edge techniques, The ER will be supervised and trained in broader aspects of academic activity, knowledge transfer and career development, enabling him to position himself as a potential research leader.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF YORK · YORK NORTH YORKSHIRECoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union