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Judi Lynn

(162,437 posts)
Sat Jan 14, 2023, 02:51 PM Jan 2023

See 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 Jericho’s ruins in 1953. All seven ended up in different collections, from the University of Oxford’s 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/
17 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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See the Face of a Neolithic Man Who Lived in Jericho 9,500 Years Ago (Original Post) Judi Lynn Jan 2023 OP
He kinda looks like Orson Welles. LudwigPastorius Jan 2023 #1
I think he looks like Joshua in the wnylib Jan 2023 #7
I'm thinking more like Billy Crystal Bayard Jan 2023 #12
LOL! LudwigPastorius Jan 2023 #13
Yes, it's true! Very similar. Thanks for sharing that photo. I never saw such a young Orson! Judi Lynn Jan 2023 #17
Hand him a guitar and he'd fit right in right now. Warpy Jan 2023 #2
The mullet never goes out of style it would seem. Bristlecone Jan 2023 #3
wow. AllaN01Bear Jan 2023 #4
Well if that's what we looked like 9,500 years ago KS Toronado Jan 2023 #5
A few million years. wnylib Jan 2023 #8
Monkeys?? Duppers Jan 2023 #9
Usually but not today, it's in the history books KS Toronado Jan 2023 #10
Seriously? Duppers Jan 2023 #11
Just got back home KS Toronado Jan 2023 #14
You're welcome. Duppers Jan 2023 #15
Missing are 4-inch nose hairs, monobrow, 2lbs of ear hair and neck beard since no razors or tweezers TheBlackAdder Jan 2023 #6
Evolution hasn't eliminated those things..... Red Mountain Jan 2023 #16

Judi Lynn

(162,437 posts)
17. Yes, it's true! Very similar. Thanks for sharing that photo. I never saw such a young Orson!
Thu Jan 26, 2023, 06:05 AM
Jan 2023

Whattan actor! Unforgettable personality, sensibility. The best.

Warpy

(113,131 posts)
2. Hand him a guitar and he'd fit right in right now.
Sat Jan 14, 2023, 03:47 PM
Jan 2023

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.

KS Toronado

(19,617 posts)
5. Well if that's what we looked like 9,500 years ago
Sat Jan 14, 2023, 05:45 PM
Jan 2023

how far do we have to go back when we resembled monkeys? Since we supposedly evolved from them.

Duppers

(28,248 posts)
11. Seriously?
Sat Jan 14, 2023, 06:37 PM
Jan 2023

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

(19,617 posts)
14. Just got back home
Sun Jan 15, 2023, 02:54 AM
Jan 2023

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.

In fact, not only did Darwin never propose that humans are descended from monkeys, but the very idea is
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.
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