You Can Now Look At The Faces Of Some Of Britain's Earliest Inhabitants

[Judi Lynn]

Rosie McCall
By Rosie McCall
31 JAN 2019, 10:53

Thanks to an exhibition at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery in the UK (open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm), you can now take a look at some of Britain's oldest residents.

The museum opened the doors to their shiny new Elaine Evans Archaeology Gallery last weekend, where they are displaying facial reconstructions of those who lived in southern England (and places slightly further afield) thousands of years ago. The collection includes a young Neolithic woman, a Cro-Magnon man sporting a hipster-like beard, and a Neanderthal. Together, these individuals span 40,000 years of European history.

The man responsible for resurrecting these characters is archaeologist and sculptor Oscar Nilsson, whose previous work has included a 9,000-year-old teen and a 1,200-year-old Peruvian queen.

To create their likeness, he starts with a 3D replica of the skull and builds on it, determining the thickness of the skin and other tissue from the origin, sex, and age of the person in question. Next, he "colors it in", basing his color choices on genome studies that reveal the eye, skin, and hair color of different human populations.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/take-a-look-at-some-of-britains-oldest-residents-0/