Brazilians reconstruct the face of a 35,000-year-old Egyptian – 04/19/2023 – Science

With just a few fragments of cranial bones, a team of specialists from Brazil managed to make a digital reconstruction of the face of a miner who lived in North Africa around 35,000 years ago.

The skeletal remains of the man, identified as Nazlet Khater 2 (or NK2, as it is the second human body found at the Nazlet Khater site), were discovered in 1980 in the Nile Valley.

Anthropological analyzes of the body led experts to conclude that it was a man aged between 17 and 20, measuring just under 165 cm and of African descent.

Some features and deformations of his bones showed that he was a worker, probably in the mining industry, who had “heavy work in his life”.

According to the study, conducted by forensic designer Cícero Moraes in collaboration with anthropologist Moacir Elias Santos, NK2’s remains show evidence that he made “physical efforts with constant weight lifting since childhood”.

Santos is an archaeologist at the Ciro Flamarion Cardoso Museum of Archeology, in Ponta Grossa. Moraes is a designer.

This is consistent with the fact that Nazlet Khater was a rock mining site. And next to the body of NK2 was found a bifacial ax that was probably used for this type of work.

The reconstruction of the face

Although the skeleton was almost complete, Moraes and Santos’ work faced a major difficulty: parts of the skull were missing, some in the facial region.

Since the left part of the face was complete, they made a “mirror” to fill in the missing part on the right side, they explain in their study.

Applying this and other cranial reconstruction techniques, they created a model to work with software that is often used in this type of recreation, “generating more robust data on the size of the lips and nose”, explain the specialists.

As it is not possible to know what skin tone he had, what his eyes were and what type of hair he had, since there are no DNA samples in this type of case, Moraes and Santos made a “more objective and scientific” model, which consisted of in a grayscale bust.

Through it, it is possible to get an approximation of what the facial physiognomy of the young miner NK2 was like, whose remains were preserved in the Nile Valley for thousands of years.

For dissemination purposes, the specialists also offered a more artistic approach, with characteristics of the inhabitants of this Egyptian region.

In this image, they present how he would look with his eyes open, with a beard and hair. Moraes and Santos warn that there are “speculative” elements in the image.

“Because it is a work that will be presented to the general public, it provides the necessary elements for a complete humanization”, they say.

In the past, other reconstruction experts have offered images of what the humans found in Nazlet Khater might look like.

In all cases, these are approximations, as it is not possible to recreate with 100% certainty what a person was like just with information on their bone appearance.

This text was published here.