Researchers made use of photogrammetry to make two facial reconstructions of an ancient Egyptian man who lived 30,000 years ago. This facial reconstruction of the oldest human discovered could offer hints regarding the evolution of humans.
Oldest Human Discovered
According to Live Science, the man's skeletal remains are the oldest discovered in Egypt and are among the oldest ever found in the whole world.
This old guy's skeletal remains were unearthed at the Nile Valley archaeological site, Nazlet Khater 2, back in 1980. Further anthropological analysis showed that the man, who had African roots, was between 17 and 29 years old when he died. His height was also around five feet, three inches.
As per the Mirror, estimations indicate that the man lived around 30,000 years ago, which was before the first pharaoh took his rule. Decades after the discovery, the skeleton remains to be the only full modern human skeleton that was discovered in Africa that dates to the late Stone Age's beginnings.
Though researchers were able to uncover these details about the man and noted how he was buried with a stone ax, there is actually very little that is known about this prehistoric Egyptian person.
Now, a group of Brazilian specialists did a facial reconstruction of the man based on dozens of digital shots that they had gathered as they examined the man's skeleton.
Facial Reconstruction of Oldest Known Ancient Egyptian Man
Moacir Santos, the study's first author and an archaeologist from the Brazil Ciro Flamarion Cardoso Archaeology Museum, notes that the skeletal remains have the majority of their bones preserved, despite the absence of some, including the hands, ribs, part of the shin, feet, lower left tibia, and middle-inferior right tibia. Most notable, the skull, which is the main basis for facial approximation, stayed preserved.
The researchers observed something interesting about the skull: its jaw was different from those of the present day. Other than that, a skull portion was also missing. Hence, the team had to copy and mirror the skull using its other side and data from CT scans of living donors.
The researchers used photogrammetry to digitally consolidate various images. By doing so, they were able to come up with two 3D facial approximations of this ancient Egyptian.
The first one was a grayscale image in which the man's eyes were neutrally closed. The second one took a more artistic approach, as it displayed a man with a cleaned beard and tousled dark hair.
New lifelike facial approximation of a man who lived 30,000 years ago in what is now Egypt based on photogrammetry. pic.twitter.com/meX9rs7Muc
— Nrken19 (@nrken19) April 3, 2023
Santos notes how this facial approximation helped in bridging the gap between present-day humans and those from prehistoric periods. These facial reconstructions may also help archaeologists get a better picture of human evolution.
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