Is Bone Elevation in Hand Muscle Attachments Associated with Biomechanical Stress? A Histological Approach to an Anthropological Question.

In anthropological sciences, muscle attachments are typically utilized for reconstructing the physical activities of past human populations. This approach relies on the concept that entheseal bone morphology is influenced by cumulative biomechanical stress. A fundamental criterion for assessing the stage of entheseal change involves the proportion of elevated bone area.

A repeatable geometric morphometric approach to the analysis of hand entheseal three-dimensional form.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to put forth a precise landmark-based technique for reconstructing the three-dimensional shape of human entheseal surfaces, to investigate whether the shape of human entheses is related to their size. The effects of age-at-death and bone length on entheseal shapes were also assessed.

Materials And Methods: The sample comprised high-definition three-dimensional models of three right hand entheseal surfaces, which correspond to 45 male adult individuals of known age.

Occupational manual activity is reflected on the patterns among hand entheses.

Objectives: In anthropological sciences, entheses are widely utilized as occupational stress markers. However, the reaction of entheseal surfaces to mechanical loading is not well understood. Furthermore, previous studies on entheses relied on the individuals' occupation-at-death.

Patterns of activity adaptation in humeral trabecular bone in Neolithic humans and present-day people.

Objective: The annual turnover rate of trabecular bone by far exceeds that of cortical bone and, therefore, is very sensitive to its daily loading regime. Here we test the hypothesis that the study of the trabecular bone architecture of the human humerus is able to differentiate between different habitual manual activities.

Materials And Methods: For this purpose, we compared the trabecular architecture of the humeral head in a Neolithic population to that of a sample of contemporary Europeans using micro-computed tomography (microCT).

A comparison of proximal humeral cancellous bone of great apes and humans.

The shoulder is the most mobile joint in the primate body, and is involved in both locomotor and manipulative activities. The presumed functional sensibility of trabecular bone can offer a way of decoding the activities to which the forelimbs of fossil primates were subjected. We examine the proximal humeral trabecular architecture in a relatively closely related group of similarly sized hominids (Pongo pygmaeus, Pan troglodytes, and Homo sapiens), in order to evaluate the effect of diverging habitual motion behaviors of the shoulder complex in a coherent phylogenetic group.