I had serious interest in this field when I was younger.
If there is zero DNA available , only the skull - then it's not easy to reconstruct facial features.
There are marks on the bone that can tell us where the muscles and tendons were attached.
But stuff like eyelid shape, fatty tissue of cheeks etc, shape of nosetip etc ...are impossible to see just from the bone.
Preparators use what info they get from the skull structure and then they add features that they expect.
If the skull was found in northern Germany, they make them look Germanic. If it was found in Russia, they make it look Russian etc
They usually check which civilisation the person was from and then model the face after it.
In some museums you will see two models next to the same skull, just to give you an idea. More often than not they look like two different people.
This kinda works with well known civilizations but the older it is the harder it gets obviously.
Look here:
This is a reconstruction of รtzi, probably the most famous reconstruction.
If course, รtzi is well researched these days so they know a lot about his DNA, what he ate, where he lived, his illnesses etc
When this model was firs built they gave him blue eyes. Just because. Later genetic research confirmed that his eyes were brown, so they changed the model.
Now, take a good look at this guy.
Looks like your typical Austrian alpine inhabitant, right? I can almost imagine him say servus and start yodeling.
BUT
รtzi is not even related to modern day Austrians
or to anyone from the Alps for that matter
So we can conclude that the face they gave him in this model is based on their fantasy.
His actual genetic descendants live in Sardinia and Corsica btw (but his blood got pretty thin)
That's just one example.
With homo sapiens of course, it is muuuuch easier than when we want to reconstruct a prehistoric hominid face.
We're talking about time spans of millions of years here.
A lot can happen to a corpse over that time!
Scientists are not even sure whether each of the hominid species we "know" of today even existed!
Some species are represented by only one, or by incomplete bodies!
The timelines and family trees are subject to constant change because new evidence is gathered all the time.
It's very possible that, for example a skeleton they find is from a person that had a birth defect/disability.
Or that the bone got deformed due to movements of the earth. Or due to influence by natural chemicals in the soil, or the pH value.
(this applies mostly to the super old hominids, like the first ones we know of. The such as the proposed 'missing links' between animals and humans.)
The wrong pH value can literally disintegrate entire bones in the span of just a few years.
One must be relatively lucky to find an intact human skeleton that is 10.000 years or 100.000 old. If it's in the Siberian permafrost, you'll find 2000 y/o mummies so well preserved, you can still recognise their face expression. Some almost look alive, it's crazy.
But if it's the humid tropics, a corpse turns into earth within a few weeks lol
Finding an intact human skeleton that is millions of years old, imagine how hard THAT must be.
Most of the time you can forget about DNA extraction. No DNA left.
DNA is not exactly stable.
The hominid remains that are still there(=those that by some quirk of fate were not eaten by animals, not disintegrated in bad ph value soil, not shattered during earth quakes, not drowned by rising sea level etc) are a non-representative selection.
Researchers are literally grasping at straws.
Of course, they will never openly tell you. Archeology might be a field of science but every and any scientific finding needs proper presentation to find success with the audience.
No researcher simply goes "hey people, I found something here and analyzed it, now look at this"
There's politics in this (not world politics lol but remember that researchers are human beings and therefore not unbiased. People have agendas. And sponsors may have even bigger agendas).
It does happen that some archeological findings -and this applies to any field of archeology- are not shown to the public for years or decades. And it's not rare for findings to just lowkey rot away in some badly ventilated basement museum archive for years WITHOUT EVER BEING EXAMINED IN A LAB.
Remember, research costs money. A lot of money.
Maybe you read about the Denisovans. A new human species that was discovered just a few years ago.
Picture this: just a few years ago no single soul knew that the Denisovans have ever lived.
Just like Neanderthals, the Denisovans could mix with homo sapiens, and probably also with Neanderthals.
Even today, there are still humans who have a little of Denisovan DNA.
And, just like Neanderthals, they were probably pretty intelligent.
They weren't dumber than we are.
Just to give you a short introduction to the matter.
It's a really interesting field and I would've almost followed that as a career path.
Because the founders of modern science is dudes who believe in skin color superiority and they set the foundation, so homo sapien should be always white
Modern research even suggests that the earliest humans were nit even black, but light brown.
The white and the black skin colors developed later as an adaptation to sunlight.
But in those archeological timelines we're always shown pre-human hominids with black skin who gradually lighten up, then the Neanderthal with brown skin and the homo sapiens is a white, blue eyed dude.
I sent a link to this forum to Ol' Mom Goblin just out of curiosity and since she was wondering what this forum was about.
She checked the rules and one of the spoiler threads. But she said she hates forums because of how much info and discussion there is so she got off pretty quickly.
Her conclusion was that this place was about "roasting people" lmao
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