WE find it quite difficult to project a face onto a skull,’ admits Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University. Through a mixture of science and sculpture, she has taken the skulls of Richard III and Robert the Bruce, then shown how they would have looked in their prime. ‘Seeing someone’s face is a really good way of interacting and communicating with them,’ she continues. ‘It also creates a sense of empathy and understanding and has been used by museums as a way of drawing the attention of the audience, of connecting them with people from the past.’
Facial reconstructions have been around since the late 19th century, at first as a strand of forensic science and then, in the same way, that dental records might be used, as a way of confirming the identity of the deceased. However, another use that also began to emerge was as a means of delving back into the deep past and re-creating what our ancestors would have looked like.
The existence of the skull is key. A cast of it is made and then, using knowledge of facial tissue and muscles, a face is painstakingly built up, layer by layer. Sometimes, this is done in clay by hand, other times digitally, with a computer. Yet, explains Prof Wilkinson, ‘anatomical accuracy isn’t the only thing that’s important in these depictions. There is always going to be that interplay between scientific rigor and artistic interpretation. You need it to look realistic as a face. It needs to look like a person’.
Esta historia es de la edición February 12, 2020 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición February 12, 2020 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds