https://www.sapiens.org/culture/margaret-mead-femur/
But when Mead was asked directly in an interview, “When does a culture become a civilization?,” her documented response was very different. “Looking at the past,” Mead replied, “we have called societies civilizations when they have had great cities, elaborate division of labor, some form of keeping records. These are the things that have made civilization.”
The claim about the healed femur is also vague and inaccurate. While bioarcheologists have indeed taken a keen interest in fractures when studying ancient human remains, their research has revealed a more complicated picture of what such injuries reveal about human nature.
Some examples from the past seem to be in line with the anecdote, pointing to elaborate human efforts to care for the injured. As SAPIENS columnist Stephen Nash wrote of an ancient Puebloan woman who suffered a fall and received medical care some 800 years ago: “Love and the often inexorable will-to-live can push the human body to do remarkable things, even in the absence of modern painkillers.” But fractured bones found in the archaeological record can sometimes point to a more pernicious side of humanity—such as the presence of interpersonal violence among ancient humans.
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Research by biological anthropologists and others shows there are actually signs of healed bones all over the animal kingdom. For instance, while some studies suggest that healed bones are rare for adult primates, they are not unprecedented or particularly uncommon for juveniles.
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