Margaret Foreign Ministry is an American anthropologist, most famous thanks to the study of the socialization of children and adolescents in Polynesia. It is told that the first sign of the emergence of human civilization, she called the fused femur. We decided to check if the scientist said this.

This story They tell and in Media, and in books. In particular, it leads in its book “Best help from the possible” American doctor, palliative medicine pioneer Aira Robert Bayok. He Writes: "The student once asked the Anthropologist Margaret Med:" What was the earliest sign of civilization? " He expected that she would call a clay vessel, a sharpened stone, or maybe a weapon. Margaret Med thought for a while, and then said: "The fused femur." The femoral bone is the longest bone in the body connecting the hip apparatus and knee. In societies deprived of the achievements of modern medicine, the femoral bone fuses in approximately six months of peace. The fused femur shows that someone cared for the victim, hunted and got food, was with him, guarded it until the fracture was overgrown. The Foreign Ministry explained that where the jungle law is in force - the rule of survival of the strongest - archaeologists did not find fused femoral bones. Thus, the first sign of civilization is compassion, expressed in the fused fracture of the femur. ”

Margaret Foreign Ministry Interested in From childhood, love for science was instilled by her parents: her father was a professor of finance, and his mother was a sociologist who worked with Italian immigrants. She conducted field research for a doctoral dissertation on Samoa, where she collected extensive material about growing up and socializing children and adolescents in an original island culture. Later, he formed the basis of the book “Cultation on Samoa”, which quickly gained immense popularity. In total, the Foreign Ministry wrote six popular science books about anthropology. However, the story described in them is not found.

The earliest mention of such a conversation is in book Paul Brand and Philip Yansy "made frightening and wonderful." Paul Brand - surgeon, 18 years old Working In the Indian Leporia, the laureate of the Albert Lasker Prize, the honorary owner of the Order of her Imperial Majesty Queen Elizabeth. In the book, he says that he was still attended by a student at a lecture where the Foreign Ministry said this. It is known that Brand studied at the Universitic College Hospital in London during the Second World War and after it. From 1936 to 1950 Margaret Med was Married to the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson. That is, in theory, she could well give a lecture in the UK in those years, which was present at Paul Brand. However, there are no documentary evidence in open sources.