Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions

Abstract

Stature and the pattern of body proportions were investigated in a series of six time-successive Egyptian populations in order to investigate the biological effects on human growth of the development and intensification of agriculture, and the formation of state-level social organization. Univariate analyses of variance were performed to assess differences between the sexes and among various time periods. Significant differences were found both in stature and in raw long bone length measurements between the early semipastoral population and the later intensive agricultural population. The size differences were greater in males than in females. This disparity is suggested to be due to greater male response to poor nutrition in the earlier populations, and with the increasing development of social hierarchy, males were being provisioned preferentially over females. Little change in body shape was found through time, suggesting that all body segments were varying in size in response to environmental and social conditions. The change found in body plan is suggested to be the result of the later groups having a more tropical (Nilotic) form than the preceding populations. Am

A probable case of gigantism in a fifth Dynasty skeleton from the Western Cemetery at Giza, Egypt

“…Aufderheide & Rodríguez-Martín (1998) defined gigantic stature as three or more standard deviations above the mean stature of the population. The stature of 192.4 cm for skeleton 2507X is greater than three standard deviations above the mean statures reported by Zakrzewski (2003) for ancient Egyptian groups. Stature comparisons between 2507X and each of these population means are highly significantly different (P < 0.001), with z scores of 4.47, 6.56 and 5.10 for the Early Dynastic, Old and Middle Kingdoms, respectively.…”

“…Robins & Shute (1986) reported average male stature of 168.7 cm using the femur and 169.4 cm using the humerus in a sample of predynastic skeletons from Naqada. Zakrzewski (2003) provided stature estimates for Egyptians from various time periods using the formulae revised for ancient Egyptians presented by Robins & Shute (1986). Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom males had mean statures of 169.6 AE 5.1 cm (n ¼ 11), 168.8 AE 3.6 cm (n ¼ 16) and 166.4 AE 5.1 cm (n ¼ 13), respectively, based on femoral and tibial length.…”

Sahara: Barrier or corridor? Nonmetric cranial traits and biological affinities of North African late holocene populations

“…The Kerma skeletons were excavated in the ''Eastern Cemetery '' by Reisner in 1913'' by Reisner in -1914'' by Reisner in and 1915'' by Reisner in -1916, and date between 2000 and 1550 BC (Keita, 1988;Filer, 1992;Zakrzewski, 2003). Kerma was the capital of the Kingdom of Kush in Upper Nubia (Hafsaas-Tsakos, 2009).…”

Body size estimation of small‐bodied humans: Applicability of current methods

“…Changes to stature and/or body mass within a population over time as reflected in skeletal samples, can be interpreted as indicating a response to environmental stressors (e.g., resource availability, population density, disease, etc.) (Zakrzewski, 2003(Zakrzewski, , 2007Pfeiffer and Sealy, 2006;Stynder et al, 2007;Giannecchini and Moggi-Cecchi, 2008;Ginter, 2008). Recent research relating to stature and body mass estimation in various skeletal populations (e.g., Auerbach and Ruff, 2004;Raxter et al, 2006Raxter et al, , 2008Giannecchini and Moggi-Cecchi, 2007;Smith, 2007;Ruff, 2007;Scuilli and Blatt, 2008) emphasizes the importance of these variables to anthropologists in archaeological and forensic contexts.…”