The Great Inca Rebellion

Student Handout

The Tale Bones Tell

Farming provided a revolutionary change in human lifestyle. Agriculture helped bring about the development of large communities and complex societies. In this activity, you will have the opportunity to assess how the shift to agriculture may have affected health.

Your task is to compare the skeletal remains of two populations. Specifically, you want to determine if there are differences in the health of the two groups, especially differences that may be related to their different diets and lifestyles.

Procedure

1. After you have been assigned to a Home Team, read the "Two Communities" handout that provides information about each community. As a class, list and review the main foods that each community ate.

2. Each Home Team member will be assigned to one of the following Expert Teams:

   • Community Demographics (Team I)
   • Skull: Porotic Changes (Team II)
   • Bones: Osteoporosis and Growth Arrest Lines (Team III)
   • Teeth: Enamel Hypoplasia (Team IV)
   • Teeth: Cavities (Team V)

3. Your Home Team will split up and team members will reorganize into their assigned Expert Teams. Each Expert Team will be given a handout that includes data related to its topic area. Expert Team members will analyze the data together and answer the questions listed at the bottom of their handout. Team members should refer to the written information provided on each handout to help draw conclusions about the data. The key question each Home Team will be trying to answer is:

   What do these skeletal remains reveal about the nutritional health of each community?

4. Members of each expert team should prepare graphs for presentation to their Home Team members. Review the data in your Expert Team to determine the most appropriate type of graph to create.

5. Once all Expert Teams have finished, team members will return to their original Home Teams. Each team member will prepare and share information about what was learned in his or her Expert Team, including the following:

   • description of the skeletal part(s) studied
   • nature and cause of the condition studied
   • conclusions reached about the data, including a presentation of the graphed data

6. After each expert has shared information, work together in your Home Team to write a short summary that answers the key question of what the skeletal remains revealed about the nutritional health of each community.