Anthropology
Related: About this forumSee the Face of a Neolithic Man Who Lived in Jericho 9,500 Years Ago
Prehistoric people modified a skull to create a rudimentary likeness of its owner. Now, scholars have produced a more accurate facial reconstruction
Meilan Solly
Associate Editor, History
January 11, 2023
The researchers' facial reconstruction shows a bearded, brown-eyed man in his 30s or 40s. Cicero Moraes, Thiago Beaini and Moacir Santos
Around 7000 B.C.E., residents of Jericho, a settlement in what is now the West Bank, transformed seven skulls into sculptures, adorning the bones with plaster and paint and covering the eye sockets with shells. Perhaps designed to represent specific people, the craniums were likely reburied as images of community forebears long after their individual identities were forgotten, according to the British Museum, which houses one of the so-called Jericho skulls.
Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon discovered the cache of prehistoric skulls while excavating Jerichos ruins in 1953. All seven ended up in different collections, from the University of Oxfords Ashmolean Museum to the Jordan Archaeological Museum.
But the very modifications that made the specimens unique also posed a problem for archaeologists hoping to peer beneath the plaster with traditional X-rays. In 2016, experts at the British Museum created the first 3D model of a Jericho skull, drawing on non-invasive micro-CT scans that digitally removed the materials encasing the bones to approximate what their owner may have looked like in life.
Now, reports Tom Metcalfe for Live Science, a team led by 3D designer Cicero Moraes is using an alternative technique to produce its own stunning facial reconstruction of the skull. While the 2016 model relied on the Manchester method, which is often used to reconstruct the faces of crime victims, Moraes and his colleagues used a deformation and anatomical adaptation method more closely associated with plastic surgery and prosthetics manufacturing.
More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/see-the-face-of-a-neolithic-man-who-lived-in-jericho-9500-years-ago-180981426/
LudwigPastorius
(10,851 posts)wnylib
(24,454 posts)movie, Ten Commandments, played by John Derek.
https://images.app.goo.gl/cEmtvh1Zd6S6e8FL9
https://images.app.goo.gl/eAZp4SUhYa8aMEB26
Bayard
(24,145 posts)LudwigPastorius
(10,851 posts)Judi Lynn
(162,406 posts)Whattan actor! Unforgettable personality, sensibility. The best.
Warpy
(113,130 posts)The area has been settled since the Mesolithic, abandoned during extremely dry periods and then resettled. That's impressive, it must have been particularly desirable real estate.
Bristlecone
(10,492 posts)AllaN01Bear
(23,073 posts)KS Toronado
(19,600 posts)how far do we have to go back when we resembled monkeys? Since we supposedly evolved from them.
wnylib
(24,454 posts)Duppers
(28,247 posts)Being facetious?
KS Toronado
(19,600 posts)"Scopes monkey trial" debate between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan 1925
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053946/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_6_act
Duppers
(28,247 posts)Yes, I know all about that trial.
We just seem to be misunderstanding each other.
Humans did evolve but not from any contemporary species.
KS Toronado
(19,600 posts)All these years I honesty thought the "evolutionists" were still preaching we evolved from monkeys
probably on account of the movie, never really believed it but thought they did. So I looked it up.
I was the misunderstanding one not you.
erroneous. For some reason, 150 years later, the work of the father of the theory of evolution has remained
one of the most misunderstood in the history of science.
Thanks for questioning me, I got an education and learned something today.
Darwin's baby picture.
Duppers
(28,247 posts)TheBlackAdder
(28,941 posts)Red Mountain
(1,888 posts)technology has.
All hail technology.