The story of Homo sapiens is written largely in artifacts. Countless tools, potsherds, and other relics line museum shelves, illuminating the world of our ancestors. But most of the time, this historical picture, though richly strewn with inanimate objects, lacks what would most bring it to life — the people themselves.
To fill that void, Swedish archaeologist Oscar Nilsson has spent 30 years reconstructing the faces of the dead. With an artist's touch and 150 years of anatomical data at his disposal, he can transform any skull into a strikingly realistic visage. His sculptures — some 80 of them adorn museums around the globe — offer an electrifying link to the distant past.
“When you see a human face, you get an emotional response,” Nilsson says. “It makes us understand history in a much more personal way.” Here’s how he and other practitioners of facial reconstruction make these awe-inspiring creations.
Building a Face
To start, Nilsson gathers all the information he can about his subject. Besides CT scans of the skull, which serve as a foundation, he needs to know four things: the person’s gender, ethnicity, age, and weight. With that information, he can estimate the depth of tissue in various regions of the face by simply looking it up in a table of averages. (Since 1883, scientists have taken roughly 220,000 tissue thickness measurements from nearly 20,000 adults.)
