Abstract
A series of bone tissue of an ancient human femur from Maezuka Kofun in Nara Prefecture was examined by the scanning and transmission electron microscopy and the historadiography. Furthermore, the same bone material was analyzed for amino acid composition.
1) On the Kofun bone materials, only traces of the Haversian and Volkmann canals could be recognized; neither concentric nor interstitial lamellae could be identified at all with the scanning microscope.
2) In the historadiography from the same section, however, the Haversian system appeared with the characteristic concentric rings surrounding a central canal; the interstitial lamellae were shown lucent on the film.
3) Transmission electron microscopy of the microreplicas disclosed the presence of collagenous material. Striated fibrils could be found with the typical periodicity of 640A. Ancient bone tissue contained in addition hexagonal crystals of which diameters were considerably larger than those of recent bone crystals.
4) Hydrolysate of the demineralized Kofun bone contained 726.8n mol/g amino acids with similar composition to the recent bone amino acid contents.
