Can DNA solve the mystery of pointy skulls?

[Piney]

5 hours ago, Helen of Annoy said:

It would be so convenient if bones could actually talk. 

Sometimes they do with DNA, tooth enamel and various dents and dings.

 

[Hanslune]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

Sometimes they do with DNA, tooth enamel and various dents and dings.

 

They also give us data by their 'wear' profiles which show how the muscles attached to such bones were used. Right handed sword and shield men usually have over developed right arms, signs of 'Tennis Elbow' and hundreds of small fractures in their left shoulders and forearms. Etc., etc.

[Piney]

12 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

They also give us data by their 'wear' profiles which show how the muscles attached to such bones were used. Right handed sword and shield men usually have over developed right arms, signs of 'Tennis Elbow' and hundreds of small fractures in their left shoulders and forearms. Etc., etc.

I forgot about the "tennis elbow" in swordsmen and I have it for that reason......well that and chainsaw carving. 

They found this Scottish knight. Boy that dude had some battles.

http://www.medievalists.net/2013/03/grave-of-medieval-knight-and-monastery-site-found-in-edinburgh/

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/14/medieval-knight-found-beneath-scottish-parking-lot/

[Windowpane]

12 minutes ago, Piney said:

I forgot about the "tennis elbow" in swordsmen and I have it for that reason......well that and chainsaw carving. 

They found this Scottish knight. Boy that dude had some battles.

http://www.medievalists.net/2013/03/grave-of-medieval-knight-and-monastery-site-found-in-edinburgh/

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/14/medieval-knight-found-beneath-scottish-parking-lot/

I'm afraid we're sadly off topic here - but what is it about 21st century car parks that so attracts mediaeval knights and monarchs ... ?

[Piney]

2 minutes ago, Windowpane said:

I'm afraid we're sadly off topic here - but what is it about 21st century car parks that so attracts mediaeval knights and monarchs ... ?

Richard was another one who was Hell on the battlefield. Henry VII  actually respected him for it.

As for this topic...pfftt.. No mystery. 

[Hanslune]

2 hours ago, Piney said:

I forgot about the "tennis elbow" in swordsmen and I have it for that reason......well that and chainsaw carving. 

They found this Scottish knight. Boy that dude had some battles.

http://www.medievalists.net/2013/03/grave-of-medieval-knight-and-monastery-site-found-in-edinburgh/

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/03/14/medieval-knight-found-beneath-scottish-parking-lot/

Yeah I did weapons training with various Japanese schools and also with the early SCA. Got a lovely number of injuries from all that - but great fun and very instructive. It gave one a clear reason why shields were invented and why helmets were the first body armor man went for and why helmets always had more weight to the left side (for right handed people). Got my fingers broken a number of times feeling that as I type.

[Hanslune]

2 hours ago, Piney said:

Richard was another one who was Hell on the battlefield. Henry VII  actually respected him for it.

As for this topic...pfftt.. No mystery. 

Well it is a mystery as to why it started but compared to why HSS started wandering all over the planet and went into unpleasant places and out of pleasant places - now that is a mystery!

[Piney]

1 minute ago, Hanslune said:

Yeah I did weapons training with various Japanese schools

I started with Kenjutsu as a child then moved up to Diamond Blade Jianshu.

I brought home quite a few scars from China. 

[Hanslune]

4 minutes ago, Piney said:

I started with Kenjutsu as a child then moved up to Diamond Blade Jianshu.

I brought home quite a few scars from China. 

We kinda started our own versions in Hawaii. The traditional school were not pleased that we let in women and let left handed fighters fight left handed or that we used non-standard weapons and lengths and also that we went with full strength blows.

[Piney]

4 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

We kinda started our own versions in Hawaii. The traditional school were not pleased that we let in women and let left handed fighters fight left handed or that we used non-standard weapons and lengths and also that we went with full strength blows.

My kenjutsu in O'ahu was a bit "unconventional". Then I hybridtized it with jianshu and took all the bells and whistles out. Or as a Sifu said I gave it a "Nihonjin simplicity". 

I'm a two handed fighter too so I'm basically a rotor saw.  

[Hanslune]

2 hours ago, Piney said:

My kenjutsu in O'ahu was a bit "unconventional". Then I hybridtized it with jianshu and took all the bells and whistles out. Or as a Sifu said I gave it a "Nihonjin simplicity". 

I'm a two handed fighter too so I'm basically a rotor saw.  

Yes that was favored style in man to man, borrowing aspects of the Florentine system too. I also used when fighting shield men 'Danish' style a long sword in my right and hand ax in my left, to secure the shield and pull it out of position. In field battles I would use a naginata or the European versus which I always called a sword-on-a-stick. Hey we've kinda gone off topic here!

[Piney]

13 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

Hey we've kinda gone off topic here!

I tried using my longsword "Moe" as my primary and "Larry" my right hand short sword at the same time but when doing Jianshu "flowers" it throws you off. 

It's hard enough performing flowers with both hands as it is. 

16 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

In field battles I would use a naginata or the European versus which I always called a sword-on-a-stick.

I studied sojutsu too but on a battlefield I would be on horseback and just use my war bow. "Parthian style" 

[Helen of Annoy]

13 hours ago, Piney said:

Sometimes they do with DNA, tooth enamel and various dents and dings.

 

Yes, in the finding from the OP the bones 'talked', with DNA and isotope analysis help, about the type and amount of food available during the lives of the people whose remains were tested, as well as their genetic origin.   

But you know what I was dreaming about - to be able to sit and talk to those people... just for few minutes... just to discover we can't find a language to communicate with  So, DNA it is... 

Edited August 29, 2019 by Helen of Annoy

[Wistman]

(Jan. 2018)  An in-depth study from the National Academy of Sciences entitled: Population genomic analysis of elongated skulls reveals extensive female-biased immigration in Early Medieval Bavaria

Quote

In the mid 6th century AD, the historiographer Jordanes and the poet and hagiographer Venantius Fortunatus provide the first mention of a group known as the Baiuvarii that resided in modern day Bavaria. It is likely that this group had already started to form in the 5th century AD, and that it emanated from a combination of the romanized local population of the border province of the former Roman Empire and immigrants from north of the Danube (2). While the Baiuvarii are less well known than some other contemporary groups, an interesting archaeological feature in Bavaria from this period is the presence of skeletons with artificially deformed or elongated skulls.

Quote

While ACD is a worldwide phenomenon that was practiced at least up to the 20th century (4), during the Late Roman and Early Medieval period in Europe it is most popularly associated with the Huns, an ambiguously defined nomadic group thought to have migrated into Europe from Asia (5). However, the earliest evidence for ACD appears in Europe in 2nd century AD burials in present day Romania that predate the proposed Hunnic invasion.

Quote

It has previously been suggested that a network of inflammatory disease-risk alleles was under positive selection in Europeans recently, potentially in response to Yersinia pestis pandemics (16). However, despite our Bavarian population living well before the time of the Black Death and even just before the first recorded instance of bubonic plague, i.e., the Justinian plague in eastern Europe, at all three analyzed loci the allele frequencies of the supposedly protective derived alleles are similar to that in modern European populations (SI Appendix, Fig. S7D and Table S30). The allele frequencies at seven other loci associated with common inflammatory diseases, such as Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and celiac disease, are also not distinguishable in the Medieval sample from those in modern Europeans, fitting well with Raj et al.’s (16) expectations that allele frequency changes at these loci occurred due to selection more than 5,000 y ago.

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/13/3494