Revealed: Face of 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal from cave (cam.ac.uk)
31 points by thunderbong 2 hours ago
groos 6 minutes ago
I wonder have the reconstruction techniques been verified by a double-blind experiment to reconstruct the face of a homo sapiens from a skull with a known photograph. Otherwise, you're just wondering how much of it is just artistry and how much solid, verified technique.
Beestie 20 minutes ago
I'm just glad that the dumb idea that Neanderthals were dumb, club carrying knuckledraggers is finally being laid to rest. I hope we eventually learn what happened to them. They survived the choke point of 75,000 years ago only to disappear 30,000 years later. So cool to put a face to the name :-)
eweise a minute ago
I never thought they were dumb once I saw that they could power a car with their feet.
cryzinger 2 hours ago
> Neanderthal skulls have huge brow ridges and lack chins, with a projecting midface that results in more prominent noses. But the recreated face suggests those differences were not so stark in life.
This surprised me enough to scroll back up and look at the reconstruction again, because it looks the woman definitely has (what I would think of as) a chin--which supports the "not so stark in real life" part. But if the skulls are that different, how would a Neanderthal face end up looking so similar to a human's? Did they have cartilage or something that doesn't get preserved in these skeletal remains?
quantified 2 hours ago
Whatever the differences, they would have been attractive enough to Homo Sapiens to breed with.
bediger4000 an hour ago
Maybe not willingly, though. Look up Danny Vendramini's neanderthal predation theory, and consider that modern X chromosomes carry no neanderthal DNA, indicating that all interbreeding involved neanderthal males and human females.
pinkmuffinere an hour ago
kazinator 2 hours ago
They had no privacy laws in the Paleolithic era, so this sort of doxxing is totally legit. Neanderthals cannot simply rely on the flesh being gone and bone being replaced by stone to conceal their faces.
amanaplanacanal 2 hours ago
I'm skeptical. Is this kind of facial reconstruction from a skull legit? Or is it pseudoscience?
prox an hour ago
It’s legit in the sense that they use this originally in forensics to reconstruct faces I think , say a victim or unknown so they can put out a search pamphlet.
They know the relative muscular thickness for each area as to compile a likeness. Is it 100% a look-a-like? Probably not, but the main features and composition should be comparable to the original face.
thangalin an hour ago
> Is this kind of facial reconstruction from a skull legit?
What did you search for when you tried to verify this yourself?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klxUyd3CgrE
Aside, a similar approach was used in a MacGyver episode nearly 40 years ago ("The Secret of Parker House"):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0638792/mediaviewer/rm119321036...
quantified 2 hours ago
I'm not sure about how much we know of musculature and fat layers of neanderthals. Working from skeletons of non-humans can be really fraught.
goodJobWalrus an hour ago
Neanderthals are humans.
Beestie 24 minutes ago
ethanrutherford 40 minutes ago
I'm not sure what would be "pseudo-science" about it, but it is as legit as it can be. Reconstruction of a face from a skull is possible, but the goal is not to create an image that's indistinguishable from a hypothetical photograph of the subject. Rather, the intent is to form a general idea of what people of the time period would have looked like. Facial reconstruction is guided by current understanding of anatomy, musculature, aging processes, etc. Muscles and skin are attached to the skull based on modern human and primate anatomy, so what we get is a plausible representation of what someone with this exact skull shape may have looked like. Like with the dinosaurs, we cannot be 100% certain what the superficial exterior features looked like exactly. But, unlike with the dinosaurs, we know neanderthals are very closely related to modern humans, so we have a much more reasonable base to start from, as we can assume their facial muscles, skin, hair etc. would be similar to humans, but with different proportions. Plenty of real science goes into the process.