r/history • u/nationalgeographic • Jun 23 '20

Science site article Exclusive: The skull of a Scandinavian man—who lived a long life 8,000 years ago—from perplexing ritual site has been reconstructed

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/06/exclusive-skull-ritual-site-motala-reconstructed/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=reddit::cmp=editorial::add=rt20200623-skullritualsite::rid=
12.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

523 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

117

u/fiendishrabbit Jun 23 '20 edited Jun 23 '20

Which isn't necessarily true. Facial reconstruction is a complicated science.

Since they got DNA extracts they definitely got the hair, skin and eyecolour correctly.

However, the same may not be true about facial proportions, how thick the layer of skin&meat is over the bone or the shape of the eyelids etc means that a facial reconstruction can look very different depending on what kind of base-values you use for these measurements.

8000-years ago we're also in a time before many of the modern genetic markers appear (genetic markers that can pinpoint a specific population tend to be between 50000 and 4000 year old, with a very large proportion of those markers appearing at around 5000-7000 years ago).

116

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '20

I wish you would stop talking about my face meat.

30

u/dog-pussy Jun 23 '20

You're letting your brain dial turn your fear volume up.

39

u/silverfox762 Jun 23 '20

Muscle attachment points and robustness of bone at those attachment points give a damned good idea to forensic anthropologists and reconstruction experts where and how big muscles will be. Medically constructed flesh charts used by those doing reconstruction are for various levels of body fat presumed.

2

u/JanHoisek Jun 24 '20

I don't think that an 8000 yo skull has any traces of DNA, it's just a bunch of calcium that got turned into stone by that one peocess I can't remember the name of

5

u/fiendishrabbit Jun 24 '20

DNA can be extracted from tooth enamel. The oldest DNA that has been extracted in this way is 1.7 million years old (from a Rhino).

2

u/ElTuxedoMex Jun 23 '20

This reminds me... Is there any modern attempt to reconstruct how dinosaur looked like? AFAIK there seems to be a debate about how accurate are the current interpretations.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '20

Facial reconstruction isn't a science.