Headscratchers / Bones S 4 E 21 Mayhem On A Cross

You can tell someone's nationality from their skeleton how again?

• Teeth Fillings mostly.
• Did they ever look at those?
  • The Norwegian authorities were able to ship Mayhem and his cross back to the US because they recognized his dental work as American.
    • At a glance? Didn't realize that doctor was a dentist.
• Yes? You can also trace particulates that are absorbed into the bone, which I seem to recall is how they actually solved that one. It's a real scientific practice.
• Not to mention that basic race (Caucasoid, mongoloid, negroid) is a snap to determine with only basic forensic anthropological training (sometimes without even the skull), and a really GOOD FA can narrow ethnic groups down to sometimes-absurd degrees of specificity without even having to resort to destructive analysis on a chemical level. Throw in mass spec and DNA and you can pretty much tell exactly who they are and where they came from. (Heck, a female pubic symphisis will tell you, from the skeleton, if they've had a vaginal childbirth and how many.) Race, age, sex, it all goes to the bone.
• To the above troper: there is no way to tell biological race from bone structure or in fact biologically in any way. Perhaps where or how that person was living at the time of their death but not Caucasoid, negroid or mongoloid mostly because race in those terms really does not exist. It's one of the things that most annoys me about this show. You cannot tell race biologically at all, only culturally, as it is nearly completely socially constructed. Race does not in any way go down to the bone, it just barely gets through the skin.
  • You are mistaking a 19th century concept of race that is used again today ('cultural race') with biological use of this word. In biology 'race' is a supergroup that basically divides the whole humanity into three basic types that can be easily identified due to differences in body structure, and several less distinct groups that can be differentiated due to less obvious but still discernible traits. The problem is that social sciences use ambiguous terminology what is exacerbated by lack of discipline in common use of terminology. Biological race, ethnicity, culture of origin and cultural identification are things that may or may not be completely unrelated in a particular case.
    • Facial features, such as protuberant noses in Europeans or squared-off cheekbones in natives of the Arctic, certainly do have a basis in underlying skull features. Racial self-identification is a social construct, but every human being on the planet does, indeed, inherit distinguishing biological traits from one or more ethnic groups. Why else would hereditary ailments like Tay-Sachs, cystic fibrosis, or sickle cell anemia be associated with specific ethnicities?
• I remember hearing Angela say multiple times that she is making a guess when adding racial muscle structures and skin tones. In reality she would probably make a series of sketches for each possible race but TV relies on conciseness so we only get the final, sketch close enough to be identified.
• One thing to be wary of is mixing up nationality, ethnicity, and cultural identity. An Asian-American who grew up among Italians for instance in the middle of Nebraska will have many different markers but some things may not show up at all.
• They also look at the chemicals, minerals, and vitamins in the bones to find out where the victim is from. That, plus bone structure, could tell you if someone were, for instance, an Asian person who spent a considerable amount of time in Utah or something.