This Month's Oddity in the News:
The Face of the First European
IN THE ARCHIVES:
The face of the first European has been recreated from bone fragments by scientists. The head was rebuilt in clay based on an incomplete skull and jawbone discovered in a cave in the south west of the Carpathian Mountains in Romania by potholers.
Using radiocarbon analysis scientists say the man or woman, it is still not possible to determine the sex, lived between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago.
Forensic scientists and others conduct facial approximation for two quite distinct but related purposes: to identify the recently dead so that they can be reunited with their kin, and to give the people of today a glimpse of our forebears as they might have appeared in life. Either way, facial approximation is a closely integrated blending of science and art, the result of a fruitful collaboration between scientists and sculptors. In the NOVA film "Mystery of the First Americans," for example, sculptor Thomas McClelland and I produced Kennewick Man's image, while artist Sharon Long and anthropologist Douglas Owsley created the approximations of the Spirit Cave mummy. The best known facial-approximation team is led by Richard Neave of the University of Manchester, England, who, with John Prag, co-authored the book Making Faces: Using Forensic and Archeological Evidence (Texas A&M University Press, 1997). Neave's team includes not only a medical artist and archeologist, but also specialists in medicine, dentistry, and genetics.
See more about the face of the first European HERE.
See more about facial recreation HERE.
