So strange. Sorry, I know that's not what this is about, but does anyone else ever get a strange feeling when they look at something that looks like a photograph of a real person, and you think you can see personality and mood and emotion and expression on their face - and it's actually non-existent as a person and never did exist, and that expression on that face never existed even though we seem to have a record of it? Holy run on sentence. I'm just trying to describe the really odd feeling I get looking at that picture and failing dismally. So I'll stop now.

The mind is hypersensitive to facial recognition.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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cmpb???

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Comb, perhaps . Though perhaps among young people these days, this hairstyle would be considered rad, or phat, or whatever it is they do say nowadays (blessmewhatdotheyteachthemattheseschools youngwhippersnapperswhyinmyday, etc. & so forth).

You might be thinking of forensic reconstruction. But it's somewhat less than 100% accurate. There's considerable guesswork involved, and an unavoidable amount of subjectivity, for example in determining hair, eye and skin colour, or in the shape of the nose.

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The high point comes with a reconstruction of the face. Programs from animation studios allow users to add skin and hair to the model skull of a Neanderthal, but this would be too easy. The art of science requires that fantasy be subordinated to plausible assumptions. Nevertheless, there is no proof for the central formula underlying this procedure -- that the skull and appearance of a Neanderthal are related in a manner equivalent to the relation between skull and appearance in Homo sapiens. The Homo sapiens' side of that equation can be worked out empirically and in great detail, using models of actual people. The face of Homo sapiens is then "morphed" onto the skull of the Neanderthal, as Zollikofer says in best computerese

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Their bone density is different and their skulls were bigger.

Researchers think that we may have come from the same trunk, but the branches went in opposite directions, similar to the huge humanoid bipeds that roamed the planet during the same time frame.

Neandertals resembled early humans but were quite different. Some scientists think that our ancestors fought with them and eventually "wiped them out" because they could not concieve of projectile weapons.

While it's theorized that early humans may have interbred with Neandertals, they are not thought to be "early us".

I have seen some forensic reconstruction and they're usually pretty good, though accuracy does depend on how much of the skull is available. They're more accurate with an older subject, since the bones are harder. In a specimen this young, a lot of cartilege has been lost. Colouring is mostly guess-work: if some hair has been preserved, it gives a clue to pigmentation. Skin texture and eye-colour are entirely done by extrapolation.

The fact that H sapiens didn't descend from Neanderthal man isn't all that significant: the broken branches also came from the same tree.
It's kind of funny that Neanderthal had a bigger brain (probably) than any of the successful candidates. But it's not really significant, since brain-pan size and brain mass vary hugely in modern humans, with little or no corelation to intelligence.

There was a beautiful sf story about a Neanderthal child brought into the future and sent back again (the nurse went, too). It was made into an excellent a tv drama (Outer Limits?). Memory fails on details. The point i'm groping for is that the child was a LOT uglier than this one, and i found it more believable. I wonder if that's because we generally prefer to think of them as uglier than us.
Also a wonderful (and probably unfindable) novel by (?)William Golding called 'The Inheritors'.

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

[ May 01, 2002: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

Dr. Isaac Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy".

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Not only that, but I'll bet he probably wasn't pale or sickly-thin either, because he was a carpenter and was probably quite built. He was extremely charismatic, so was probably a lot more striking-looking.

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So you're a fan of so-called "muscular Christianity," Michelle?

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/hojfaq.html

http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testimonium.htm

http://www.sonic.net/sentinel/naij3.html

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: Victor Von MediaBoy ]

Jesus, the short, fat bald man

[ May 02, 2002: Message edited by: clockwork ]

That's the guy who held the unauthorized picnic for 5000 in your backyard?

That's the guy who sent your herd of pigs hurtling over a cliff?

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The Nag Hammadi texts found by an young bedouin in a cave not far from where the dead sea scrolls...

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