The face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman named “Shanidar Z” has been recreated from a flaky skull found “flat as pizza” on the floor of a cave in northern Iraq. With her calm and thoughtful expression, Shanidar Z looks like a thoughtful, friendly, even kind middle-aged woman. He is a far cry from the vicious, bestial stereotype of the Neanderthal first created in 1908 after the discovery of the “old man of La Chapelle.”
Based on the old man and the first relatively complete skeleton of his species found, scientists have made a number of assumptions about Neanderthal character. They believed that Neanderthals had a low, receded forehead, protruding midface, and thick eyebrows; this represented the baseness and stupidity seen among the “inferior races”. These assumptions were influenced by prevailing ideas about the scientific measurement of skulls and racial hierarchy; these ideas were now debunked as racist.
This reconstruction set the stage for decades of understanding of Neanderthals and showed how far modern humans had come. In contrast, this newest facial reconstruction, based on research at the University of Cambridge, invites us to empathize and see the story of Neanderthals as part of a wider human history.
“I think it might help us connect who they were,” paleoarchaeologist Emma Pomeroy, from the Cambridge team behind the research, said, speaking in a new Netflix documentary, Secrets of the Neanderthals. The documentary explores the mysteries surrounding Neanderthals and what the fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.
But the creators of Shanidar Z were not paleoanthropologists, but noted paleoartists Kennis and Kennis, who sculpted a modern human face with a recognizable sensibility and expressions. This attempt at historical facial reconstruction that evokes emotional connection is becoming increasingly common through 3D technologies and will become even more common with generative artificial intelligence.
As a historian of emotion and the human face, I can tell you that there is more art than science at work here. It is actually good art, but its history is questionable.
Technologies such as DNA testing, 3D scans and CT imaging are helping artists create faces like Shanidar Z’s, creating a natural and accessible way to see people in the past. But we should not underestimate the importance of subjective and creative interpretation and how it draws on and informs contemporary assumptions.
Faces are the product of culture and environment as much as skeletal structure, and Shanidar Z’s face is largely based on guesswork. It is true that from the shape of the bones and thick eyebrows, for example, we can claim that the individual has a prominent forehead or other basic facial structures. However, there is no “scientific” evidence as to how this person’s facial muscles, nerves and fibers match the skeletal remains.
Kennis and Kennis confirmed this themselves in a 2018 interview with the Guardian about their practice. “There are some things the skull can’t tell you,” admits Adrie Kennis. “You never know how much fat someone has around their eyes, the thickness of their lips, or the exact position and shape of their nostrils.”
Inventing skin color, forehead lines or a half-smile is a tremendously imaginative and imaginative exercise. All of these characteristics suggest sincerity, accessibility, and approachability, qualities that define modern emotional communication. Adrie Kennis explained: “If we have to reconstruct, we always want it to be glamorous, not a dull white dummy just out of the shower.”
The skeletal remains are covered with a modern influence, reasserting the recent reimagining of Neanderthals as “just like us” rather than stick-wielding bandits.
It was only in the last 20 years that it was discovered that Neanderthals shared modern human DNA; This coincided with the discovery of more similarities than differences. For example, burial practices, caring for the sick, and the love of art.
This reimagining of Neanderthals is of historical and political interest because it draws on contemporary ideas about race and identity. But also because it reframed the popular narrative of human evolution in a way that prioritized human creativity and compassion over destruction and extinction.
The neglected history of the human face
It is creativity and imagination that define Shanidar Z’s friendly facial expressions that make him likable and relatable.
We don’t know what types of facial expressions were used by Neanderthals or were meaningful to them. Whether Neanderthals had the vocal range or hearing of modern humans is a matter of debate and may have significantly influenced social communication through the face.
None of this information can be extracted from a skull.
Facial surgeon Daniel Saleh told me about Shanidar Z’s cultural significance: “As we age, crescent-shaped wrinkles form [wrinkles] around the dimple – it changes the face – but there is no skeletal relationship to it.” Since facial expressions such as smiling evolved with the need for social communication, Shanidar Z can be seen as an example of transferring contemporary ideas about soft tissue interaction to the bones rather than introducing any scientific method .
This is important because there is a long and problematic history of attributing emotion, intelligence, kindness, and value to some faces but not others. How we represent, imagine and understand the faces of people past and present is a political as well as social activity.
Historically, societies have made the faces of those they want to connect with more emotionally empathetic. However, when cultures identify groups that they do not want to affiliate with or even want to marginalize, we have seen grotesque and inhumane ideas and imagery arise around them. Take, for example, anti-Black caricatures during the Jim Crow era in the United States or caricatures of Jews made by the Nazis.
By representing this 75,000-year-old woman as a thoughtful, gentle soul we can relate to, rather than a snarling, angry (or vapid) cipher, we say more about our need to rethink the past than any concrete facts about it. The emotional lives of Neanderthals.
There is nothing inherently wrong with artistically imagining the past, but we need to be clear about when it will happen and what it will happen for. Otherwise, we would ignore the complex power and meanings of the face in history and today.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Fay Bound Alberti receives funding from the UKRI Future Leaders Scholarship.