The correlation of increasing size with latitude, known as “Bergmann’s rule”, was first articulated in the 1840s, but its potential applicability to humans was not recognized for another century. In this paper, I have tested if human craniometric data collected by 19th-century naturalists supported this “rule”. At least in the northern hemisphere, ...
The question posed is how deep-time perspectives contribute to tackling contemporary One Health challenges, improving understanding and disease mitigation. Using evidence from the field of paleopathology, it is possible to explore this question and highlight key learning points from the past to focus the minds of those making healthcare pol...
There is a long-standing view that, in the Roman world, transport by sea and river was very much cheaper than by land. Previous analyses of transport costs have relied primarily on a few surviving historical records, notably the Edict on Maximum Prices issued by Diocletian in 301 CE. Here we outline an alternative method for deriving relative costs...
Parasites are the causative agents of infectious diseases that have affected humans throughout our evolution. Some appear to have been ubiquitous in past societies around the globe, but others were only viable in distinct regions where the conditions suited their complex life cycles. This review considers how we can recover and identify ancient par...
The study of dental microwear, the microscopic patterns left on teeth from interactions with food, has become instrumental in examining the diets of past societies. This approach gained prominence with the advent of dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA), an automated method that minimises observer error. Nevertheless, interpreting microwear patt...
Acknowledgements: I wish to thank the three anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful suggestions that have strengthened this article, as well as Kyla Cools, Katie Boyle, and Paul Shackel for their stewardship of the Anthracite Heritage Program. I am further grateful to Maria O’Donovan and Jay Stottman for their comments on earlier versions of thi...
