When you come across a human skeleton can one tell if the person was fat by how big the bones were?

Question

When you come across a human skeleton can one tell if the person was fat by how big the bones were?

Answer 1

You might be able to tell if there were stresses on the bones but it would be difficult to be sure it wasn't from excess carrying or being overweight.  When someone says they are big boned, they seldom are.

Answer 2

In Forensic Anthropology

4.4 x (stature in inches) – 143 = Wt (lbs)

Answer 3

No.  Bone size doesn't determine how much fat you load onto them.

Answer 4

No cause when your fat it doesn't stretch out your bones

Answer 5

Hi, I agree with what Wendy G said. There will be signs of stress on the bones, particularly in the knee area where overweight people usually have pain.

Answer 6

You can tell how weight/stress was carried by some bones - examining the interal structure - but not directly how fat someone was.

What you can do is learn about the muscle mass though - insertion points and ridges on the bones are related to a person's muscualture - bigger and more ridges=more muscle.

Answer 7

Generally no, we aren't really able to tell by the bones if an individual was obese.  We can determine is one was muscular, but fat is not going to change the morphology of the bones because it does not attach directly to the bones like muscles do.  An obese person might display some arthritis on certain joints such as the knees and hips due to the weight put on these joints, but a forensic anthropologist is not going to look at an arthritic hip and automatically think that individual was obese as arthritis is caused by many different factors.

However, there is a certain form of decomposition where the fat in a person's body basically turns into a waxy lipid material, called adipocere or grave wax.  The fat undergoes certain chemical changes due to the burial environment and pretty much turns into soap.  In these rare cases, the more body fat an individual had, the more grave wax is found.  This is the only case I've learned about that gives you an idea about the amount of body fat an individual had in life.

Answer 8

You could check the bone density to see if they had a lot to support a lot of weight as well as calium in the bones.

Answer 9

Not by how big the bones are, but there are other signs. There will be certain "stress indicators" on the bones, left by weight of th body. An obese person would have very significant stress markers.