Science or Art? The Story of a 75,000-Year-Old Face
Researchers have produced a reconstruction of what they believe one of our relatives may have looked like 75,000 years ago.
Beginning with the remains of a skull that researchers described as being as flat as a pizza and as fragile as a wet cookie when discovered, a team made a 3D model of a Neanderthal woman, who has been named Shanidar Z.
The model appeared in the Netflix documentary Secrets of the Neanderthals, which was released in May.
The first excavations on the cave in Iraq where the skull was found — known as Shanidar — began in the 1950s, and Shanidar Z is one of several Neanderthals discovered there.
Emma Pomeroy, from the University of Cambridge, has been involved in the project since 2016, and she says the reconstructed face can help connect us with our ancient relatives.
She compared the process of piecing together the skull to a "high-stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle." More than 200 pieces — some just 2 millimeters long — were carefully removed from the cave and put back together by hand.
The experts believe Shanidar Z was in her mid-40s when she died.
Their research allowed two brothers named Adrie and Alfons Kennis to make the 3D model. The Kennis brothers are paleoartists — people who depict prehistoric life using scientific evidence.
However, a modern history professor from King's College London has a problem with their work.
Fay Bound Alberti calls their reconstruction "good art, but questionable history."
Alberti says faces are a product of the culture and environment they were part of, and that it's not possible to work out how the Neanderthal woman's muscles and nerves would have made her look, or what expressions she would have used.
And while the 3D reconstruction has a half-smile, this isn't something based on science, but a choice by the artists aiming to make Shanidar Z more accessible to a modern audience, Alberti says.
For her part, Pomeroy admits that "there is some artistic license there, but at the heart of it is the real skull and real data."
