Ancient Egyptian writers also hunched over devices and suffered the consequences

If you think that your laptop and all those prolonged sitting are making you sick, and giving you a stiff neck and back pain, think again! A study has revealed that these are not new technological concerns. Researchers studying the skeletal remains of ancient Egyptian scribes have found that sitting and working have been giving us aches and pains for centuries. These skeletons were buried in Abusir between 2700 and 2180 BCE and their structures reveal how this is not a new problem.

The skeletal remains of 69 adult males were studied of which 30 were scribes. It was deduced that they were scribes based on their tomb style and decoration. The remaining 39 were ancient labourers. The results show 40 statistically significant differences between the regular males and the scribes. An increased degeneration in the neck vertebrae was the main issue that jumped out. This means that neck pain was a common suffering shared by our ancient scribes.

The researchers wrote in the paper published in Scientific Reports, “In a typical scribe’s working position, the head had to be forward, and the spine flexed, changing the centre of gravity of the head and putting stress on the spine."

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Sitting hunched over something with the head bent forward to look at something horizontally means that the “load moment for the [neck vertebrae] induced by the weight of the head and neck increases 3.6 times in comparison to the neutral position."

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The right shoulder, clavicle, and the right thumb also showed signs of wear and tear. “Stress to the rotator cuff […] usually occurs when the arm is in an elevated position, such as among painters," they wrote.

What really stood out?

The main point that the authors noticed was changesin the temporomandibular joint, or TMJ. This is the hinge where your jaw meets your skull.

In both modern and archaeological samples, osteoarthritis in the TMJ has been seen at about 40 per cent. However, in the samples of the scribes, it has been found to be more than twicethe rest of the skeletons. This means that two out of every three scribes witnessed this problem in the TMJ.

Their tools were primarily to be blamed. “The tools that scribes used to write were made from rush […] which was cut at a slant and chewed at the end to form a brush-like head,” the authors explain. “When the pen became ragged or clogged with ink, the scribe cut off the end again and chewed the next section.”