The appearance of a woman who lived 45,000 years ago has been recreated
Scientists have restored the world's oldest human face. Researchers “revived” a woman who lived 45,000 years ago. Her skull was found in the Czech Republic – and experts used the measurements of this skull to recreate the woman's face.
Photo: Pxhere.com
Scientists have recreated the face of possibly the “earliest man" on Earth — a woman who lived 45,000 years ago, writes the Daily Mail.
Her swarthy features were brought to life by an international team of scientists from Brazil, Australia and Italy using a digital model of her fractured skull.
Fossils discovered in the Czech Republic more than 70 years ago represent only part of a skull, as researchers believe that the woman was eaten by some kind of animal after her death.
Although the team did not have access to the ancient skull, they used already recorded measurements and reference images that the researchers had previously used to recreate Tutankhamun's face this year.
The woman, nicknamed the «Golden Horse», was one of the first Homo sapiens to settle in Eurasia after our species migrated from Africa, and she had about three percent Neanderthal ancestors in her genome, writes the Daily Mail.
“Golden Horse” refers to modern humans as this group had very large brains compared to early humans who descended from ape-like ancestors, notes the Daily Mail.
The process of using images and recorded measurements is known as face approximation, which is used in forensic research. This is a prediction of a face from the skull without prior knowledge of the actual appearance of the deceased before death.
Study co-author Cicero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert, told Live Science that he and the team used statistics recorded in 2018 by researchers who created skull reconstructions for educational purposes. This technique was used on two CT scanners of a modern man and woman, resulting in a digital face.
“What caught our attention the most was the strength of the facial structure, especially the lower jaw,” Moraes said. – When the archaeologists found the skull, the first experts who analyzed it thought it was male, and it's easy to see why, in addition to the fact that the skull has characteristics that are very much in line with the male sex of the modern population, which include «sturdy» jaw. We see that the structure of the jaw of the «Golden Horse» is generally more compatible with Neanderthals.
The skull was found in nine parts in 1950 in a cave.
Moraes said Live Science that archaeologists believe animals ate the woman's face after her death.
«This animal could be a wolf or a hyena (both were present in the fauna at that time),» he said. – Despite the fact that the composite skull covers a significant part of the surface (skull + lower jaw), some areas are missing in the structure, primarily part of the nasal bone, part of the upper jaw, left eye socket and left part of the frontal bone.
"In 2018, a multinational team of researchers set to work on a 3D reconstruction of the missing areas using statistical data obtained from a group of 31 skulls, 15 male and 15 female, scanned using computed tomography at the University Hospital Center (CHU) Bordeaux. France, and from a Uche skull found in Slovakia dating back to 13,100 BC
The team also used 30 other skulls of different origins and genders to fill in the gaps in the description of the woman.
< p> The result is a realistic image of a woman with dark curly hair and brown eyes. «We were looking for elements that could make up the visual structure of the face only at a speculative level, since no data were provided on what the color of the skin, hair and eyes would be,» said Moraes.
Researchers from The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany announced in 2021 that the «Golden Horse» lived just 2000 years after the first interspecies encounters between humans and Neanderthals.
The researchers found that the DNA of this person and his population is not found in modern humans either in Asia or in Europe, where homo sapiens later colonized.