Ancient Nubians: A hard life
Making bones speak: Students analyze a Nubian skeleton from the Middle Ages. More than 400 ancient skeletons from Africa are on loan to MSU from the British Museum. Photo by G.L. KohuthE. LANSING, MI — In a narrow, modest laboratory in Michigan State University’s Giltner Hall, students pore over African skeletons from the Middle Ages in an effort to make the bones speak.
Little is known about these Nubians, meaning the information collected by graduate and undergraduate students in MSU’s Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Program will help shed light on this unexplored culture.
From what has already been gathered, life in ancient Nubia could be brutal. Residents of Mis Island – a remote area along the Fourth Cataract of the Nile River in present day Sudan – were plagued by meager diets, high infant mortality and diseases such as scurvy and tuberculosis.
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By Robert Pagliarini, 
Tom and Lupe Izzo (left) and Magic Johnson (right) at an event in East Lansing, MI, where Magic played basketball at Michigan State University. TNCP photo
By Robert C. Robinson III, MD
