by From a chipped skull, found “as flat as a pizza” on the floor of a cave in northern Iraq, the face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman named “Shanidar Z” has been reconstructed. With her calm and thoughtful expression, Shanidar Z looks like a thoughtful, approachable, even kind middle-aged woman. She is a far cry from the snarling, animalistic stereotype of the Neanderthal first created in 1908 after the discovery of the “old man of La Chapelle”.
On the basis of the old man and the first relatively complete skeleton of its kind found, scientists made a series of assumptions about the character of Neanderthal. They believed that Neanderthals had a low, receding forehead, a protruding middle face and a heavy brow that indicated base and prudence found among “lower races”. These assumptions influenced the prevailing ideas about scientific measurement of skulls and racial hierarchy – ideas that have now been abolished as racial ideas.
For decades, this reconstruction set the stage for understanding Neanderthals, and showed how far modern humans have come. In contrast, this newest facial reconstruction, based on research at the University of Cambridge, invites us to empathize and see the Neanderthals’ story as part of a wider human history.
“I think she can help us connect with who they were”, said paleoarchaeologist Emma Pomeroy, a member of the Cambridge team behind the research, speaking in the new Netflix documentary, Secrets of the Neanderthals. The documentary explores the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and their past.
However, Shanidar Z was not created by paleoanthropologists but by the well-known paleoartists Kennis and Kennis, who sculpted a modern human face with recognizable sensations and expressions. This drive towards historical facial reconstruction, which requires an emotional connection is becoming more common through 3D technologies and will become more common with generational AI.
As a historian of emotions and the human face, I can tell you that there is more art than science at work here. Indeed, it is good art, but questionable history.
Technologies such as DNA testing, 3D scanning and CT imaging help artists generate faces like Shanidar Z, creating a natural and accessible way to see people from the past. But we should not underestimate the importance of subjective and creative interpretation, and how it draws on, as well as informs, contemporary assumptions.
Faces as well as skeletal structure are a product of culture and environment and Shanidar Z’s face is largely based on guesswork. It is true that we can confirm from the shape of the bones and the heavy brow, for example, that a person had a clear forehead or other baseline facial structures. But there is no “scientific” evidence of how that person’s facial muscles, nerves and fibers overlapped the skeletal remains.
Kennis and Kennis testified to this themselves in an interview with the Guardian in 2018 about their practice. “There are some things the head can’t tell you,” admits Adrie Kennis. “You never know how much fat someone has around their eyes, or the thickness of their lips, or the position and shape of their nostrils.”
It is a huge creative and creative work to compose the color of the skin, the lines of the top or half of the smile. All these features imply friendliness, accessibility, approachability – qualities that define modern emotional communication. “If we have to do a rebuild,” explained Adrie Kennis, “we always want it to be really interesting, not a skinny white dummy that just got out of the shower.”
Overlaying skeletal remains with modern influences reaffirms the recent reimagining of Neanderthals as “just like us” rather than clubbing thugs.
It has only been discovered in the last 20 years that Neanderthals share modern human DNA, at the same time finding many similarities over differences. For example, burial practices, caring for the sick and love of art.
This reimagining of Neanderthals is historically and politically interesting because it draws on contemporary ideas about race and identity. But also because it reshapes the popular narrative of human evolution in a way that prioritizes human creativity and compassion over interference and extinction.
The history of human neglect
Creativity and imagination determine the friendly facial expression that makes Shanidar Z sympathetic and relatable.
We do not know what kinds of facial expressions were used or had meaning for Neanderthals. Whether the Neanderthals had the vocal range or hearing of modern humans is a matter of debate and would have greatly influenced human social communication.
None of this information can be extracted from a skull.
Facial surgeon Daniel Saleh told me about Shanidar Z’s cultural relevance: “As we age, we get crescent wrinkles [wrinkles] around the dimple – this changes the face – but there’s no skeletal correlation to that.” Given the evolution of facial expressions such as smiling and the need for social communication, Shanidar Z can be seen as an example of superimposing contemporary ideas about the interaction of soft tissue on the bones, rather than revealing any scientific method.
This is important because there is a long problematic history of valuing emotion, intelligence, civility and value in some faces and not in others. How we represent and imagine the faces of people in the past and the present is a political and social activity.
Historically, societies have made the faces of people they want to be connected with more emotional empathy. However, when cultures decide certain groups they do not want to associate with and, in fact, want to marginalize, grotesque and inhumane ideas and representations rise up around them. Take, for example, anti-Black caricatures from the Jim Crow era in the US or cartoons of Jews made by the Nazis.
By portraying this 75,000-year-old woman as a kind, reflective soul we can relate to, rather than a scaly, angry (or seemingly white) cipher, we are saying more about our need to rethink her make the past or any concrete fact about it. the emotional life of the Neanderthals.
There is nothing inherently wrong with imagining the past artistically, but we need to be clear about when that happens – and why. Otherwise we ignore the complex power and meanings of the human in history, and in the present.
This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Fay Bound Alberti is funded by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
