Starting from a damaged skull discovered on a cave floor in northern Iraq, the face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman named “Shanidar Z” has been built from scratch. With her tranquil and thoughtful expression, Shanidar Z looks like a contemplative, approachable, and even kind middle-aged woman. She is a far cry from the snarling, animal-like stereotype of the Neanderthal first created in 1908 after the discovery of the “old man of La Chapelle”.
According to the old man and the first relatively complete skeleton of its kind to be found, researchers made a series of assumptions about Neanderthal character. They believed Neanderthals to have a low, receding forehead, protruding midface, and heavy brow representing a baseness and stupidity found among “lower races”. These assumptions were influenced by prevailing ideas about the scientific measurement of skulls and racial hierarchy – ideas now disproved as racist.
This reconstruction set the scene for understanding Neanderthals for decades, and indicated how far modern humans had come. In contrast, this latest facial reconstruction, based on research at the University of Cambridge, encourages us to empathize and see the story of Neanderthals as part of a broader human history.
“I think she can help us connect with who they were”, stated paleoarchaeologist Emma Pomeroy, a member of the Cambridge team behind the research, while speaking in a new Netflix documentary, Secrets of the NeanderthalsThe documentary explores the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.
However, it was not paleoanthropologists, but well-known paleoartists Kennis and Kennis, who sculpted a modern human face with a recognizable sensibility and expressions. This push towards historical facial reconstruction, which evokes emotional connection is increasingly common through 3D technologies and will become more so with generative AI.
As a historian of emotion and the human face, I can tell you there is more art than science at work here. Indeed, it is good art, but questionable history.
Technologies like DNA testing, 3D scans, and CT imaging help artists to produce faces like Shanidar Z’s, creating a naturalistic and accessible way of viewing people from the past. However, we should not underestimate the importance of subjective and creative interpretation, and how it draws on contemporary presumptions, as well as informing them.
Faces are a product of culture and environment as much as skeletal structure and Shanidar Z’s face is largely based on guesswork. It is true that we can ascertain from the shape of the bones and a heavy brow, for example, that an individual had a pronounced forehead or other baseline facial structures. But there’s no “scientific” evidence about how that person’s facial muscles, nerves, and fibers overlaid skeletal remains.
Kennis and Kennis have confirmed this themselves in an interview with the Guardian in 2018 about their work. Adrie Kennis admits that there are aspects the skull cannot reveal, such as the amount of fat around the eyes, lip thickness, and the exact shape and position of the nostrils.
It requires great imagination and creativity to imagine the skin color, forehead lines, or half-smile. These traits suggest friendliness, accessibility, and approachability, which are qualities defining modern emotional communication. Adrie Kennis explained that when making a reconstruction, they aim to make it fascinating rather than a dull white dummy. They want it to be engaging.
Adding modern feelings to skeletal remains reinforces the recent reimagining of Neanderthals as being “just like us” instead of club-wielding thugs.
It is only in the last 20 years that Neanderthals have been found to share modern human DNA, coinciding with the discovery of many similarities over differences, such as burial practices, caring for the sick, and a love for art. This reinterpretation of Neanderthals is historically and politically interesting because it draws on contemporary ideas about.
race and identity . It also changes the popular narrative of human evolution to emphasize human creativity and compassion over disruption and extinction.The overlooked history of the human face
It is creativity and imagination that determine the friendly facial expression that makes Shanidar Z sympathetic and relatable.
We do not know what types of facial expressions were used or important to Neanderthals. The vocal range and hearing of
modern humans is a topic of debate and would have had a significant impact on social communication through the face. None of this can be inferred from a skull.
Facial surgeon
Daniel Saleh spoke about the cultural significance of Shanidar Z: “As we age, we develop wrinkles around the dimple – this changes the face – but there is no skeletal connection to that.” Since facial expressions like smiling evolved for social communication, Shanidar Z can be seen as an example of applying contemporary ideas about soft tissue interaction on the bones, rather than revealing any scientific method. This is important because there is a long and problematic history of attributing emotions, intelligence, civility, and value to certain faces over others. The way we represent, imagine, and understand the faces of people, past and present, is a political and social activity.
Societies historically have made the faces of those they want to be connected to more emotionally empathetic. When cultures have determined that certain groups should be marginalized, grotesque and inhuman ideas and depictions have arisen around them. For example,
anti-Black caricatures from the Jim Crow era in the US or cartoons of Jewish people made by the Nazis By representing this 75,000-year-old woman as a contemplative and kindly soul who we can relate to, rather than a snarling, angry (or blank featured) cypher, we are expressing more about our need to reconsider the past than revealing any concrete fact about the emotional lives of Neanderthals..
There is nothing inherently incorrect with creatively imagining the past, but we must be clear about when that occurs – and why. Otherwise, we overlook the intricate power and meanings of the face in history, and in the present.
Fay Bound Alberti
, Professor in Modern History and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow,King’s College London This article is republished from
The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article Scientists cannot yet determine how soft tissue covered bones, so this reconstruction is necessarily based on artistic discretion..
