The document below is the SS component of the PBL project.
Betsy Philip
11/22/13
PBL
Social Studies
The bone to height correlation is drawn from Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The Vitruvian Man was created during 1485-1490. It exhibits how the ideal human body can be inscribed in a circle and square. What Leonardo tried to show regarding the human body, is that the origin of the measurements of all things could be found in the measurements of the body.
The Vitruvian Man is a main factor of what lead people to believe that their bones and height proportions correlate. Through history, this picture of the Vitruvian Man was passed down. This picture shows how the body and bones have a connection.
In the shows on T.V, it is the job of the main character to figure out who the person that died is. Sometimes, you may not be get the whole body of a person, but if you had the length of certain bones you can figure out the height. And visa-versa.
Sometimes only a few bones are found in a location in an archeological dig. A few bones can tell about the height of a person. This is possible due to the ratios of the bones. It has been determined that there are relationships between the femur, tibia, humerus, and radius and a person’s height.
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1203/teaching/teaching2.htm
http://www.most.org/curriculum_project/Life_Sciences/middle/Post/Bones_Can_Tell_Us_More.pdf