By michael - September, 16th 2014

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Tennessee have found that environmental stressors – from the Trail of Tears to the Civil War – led to significant changes in the shape of skulls in the eastern and western bands of the Cherokee people. The findings highlight the role of environmental factors in shaping our physical characteristics. “We wanted to look at these historically important events and further our understanding of the tangible human impacts they had on the Cherokee people,” says Dr. Ann Ross, a professor of anthropology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. “This work also adds to the body of literature on environmental effects on skull growth.” The researchers drew on historical data collected by Franz Boas in the late 19th century. Boas collected measurements of the length (front-to-back) and breadth of skulls for many Native American tribes, including hundreds of members of the eastern and western bands of Cherokee.

What is it about the changing skulls of Cherokee Native Americans that could possibly tell us anything about the effects of war, genocide and starvation on the human body? Those traumatic changes, it turns out, are passed on genetically and have everything to do with everyone alive today. In what may seem like a strange study, published in Annals of Human Biology, an important revelation arises. Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Tennessee have found that environmental stressors – from the Trail of Tears to the Civil War – led to significant changes in the shape of skulls in the eastern and western Cherokee people. They are emphasizing the role of environmental factors in shaping our physical characteristics. During tumultuous times in the 1800s, researchers noticed a steady decline in head lengths for both males and females in eastern and western Cherokees. Using their birth dates …

Researchers have found that environmental stressors — from the Trail of Tears to the Civil War — led to significant changes in the shape of skulls in the eastern and western bands of the Cherokee people. The findings highlight the role of environmental factors in shaping our physical characteristics.

Please Read this Article at NaturalBlaze.com

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