Crossing the threshold of modern life: Comparing disease patterns between two documented Urban cemetery series from the city of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico

Abstract

This study compares two cemetery series together with their civil records from the city of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, which spotlight changes in lifestyle, life expectancy, and health during the twentieth century. To this end, we scored health indications in a skeletal series from the Central Cemetery of Mérida (N = 104; collected during the beginning of last century), and a recent population from the Xoclán Cemetery of Mérida, collected last decade (N = 174). The latter materializes living conditions towards and during the turn of the twenty-first century. The records under study include basic life and socioeconomic information, obtained from the civil records, along with skeletal data of age at death, sex, benign tumors, nonspecific stress markers, arthritis, and osteopenia. Our results, once age-corrected, indicate a rise in almost all analyzed indications towards the turn of the present century, which we will discuss in terms of pharmaceutical advances, public sanitation and longevity, changes in lifestyle and nutrition.