This 4,000-year-old skull has just been given a new face
Since he started making these faces, 3D printing and DNA technology have evolved, allowing him to develop a new level of detail. DNA from well-preserved bones can reveal the color of hair, skin and eyes – three parts of the reconstruction that were previously speculative. Now they are among the most reliable.
Seeing the face of a 9,000-year-old teenager reconstructed.
But in the case of the woman from Lagmansören, it was not possible to obtain any readable DNA. Instead, Nilsson analyzed historical migration pattern. She lived in a time when farmers relatively recently entered Scandinavia and began to mix with hunter-gatherer groups. He determined that she had probably been blonde with dark hair.
After the process, which he says has been thoroughly tested, Nilsson leaves the field of scientific probability and enters phase two: his imagination. Unlike gender, skin tone and teeth, an expression can not be preserved in bone. “I have to wake my face alive, so that you actually get the impression that someone is looking you in the eye,” he says.
But he refrains from being too creative – for example, portraying a strong feeling that anger is strictly forbidden, he says. What he can do is weave together emotions to give a feeling that the face is in motion and therefore alive. The finished face is recast in a skin tone silicone and Nilsson begins to add the details.
When he thought of the woman’s eyes, he thought of the boy she had been buried with. The boy’s skeleton had been too damaged to inform a recreation, but Nilsson wanted with him. He imagined the boy was her son, and she looked at him as he ran before her. They were probably hunter-gatherers who traveled behind the animal walks. Maybe, he thought, they were on their way to winter camp.
– She is not threatened, she feels at home and she is looking at this boy, Nilsson says. “It’s a safe feeling, but also almost a bit cocky. Even if she’s small, you would not want to quarrel with her. ”