Expert: Ralph Salier - 6/29/2005

Question
Hi, I would like to know the average volume of a human skeleton. I'm thinking an archaeologist who digs up bones might have an idea.

Here is why I want to know. Years ago I went to a lecture by a famous yogi who said that if you piled all the bones from all the skeletons that the average person has had for all his reincarnations that pile of bones would be as high as Mount Everest. So I'm curious to know how many reincarnations the average person has had, according to this yogi. I've calculated the volume of Mount Everest to be around 2400 cubic kilometers. So I need to know what the average volume of a human skeleton would be. I'm guessing around 1/3 cubic meters for an adult skeleton.

I know this is all approximate, but I would appreciate your estimate in case you think I'm way off (on my calculation that is :)

Answer
Hi Larry,  

What an interesting question.  First of all, I think that the volume figure for Mt. Everst is a bit shy but that is not overly important.  Your primary question is how much bone material are we made up of.  If you leave the bones whole, it occupies a box about 3 feet long, 1 foot wide and 10" tall.  This then contains all of the long bones and the skull.  The skull by volume takes up a lot of the space.  But if you crunch the bones up into a powder, it will all fit into a box about 6" on a side (1/4 cu ft).  If you burn the bones, it takes up even less.  

If, you consider that we do not come back every generation but live through 5 to 7 on each go round (50 to 70 years) and if you begin 72 thousand years ago, you should beable to develop the number of incarnations based on these two figures (some 1000+ incarnations).  

You may ask why did I use the figure of 72 thousand?  At about this time, there was an extinction level event which nearly wiped us humans off of the face of the earth.  We were down to +/- 2000 humans.  From this we repopulated.  Prior to this, there was a broad range of hominid types.  These folks may have reincarted too but you can't go back much further before you run into a speciation issue.