There was recently news of a grup of scientists who reconstructed the face of a teenager who lived 1300 years ago in Britain.
How is this possible?
I can understand that they could infer skin color or even eye color from the region the remains are found but how can they possibly know from bones if the person has a hooked nose or bulging eyes or a wide mouth etc? You know, the features that usually are the features which make us different from one another. How??
Is this part make believe?
In: 11
Population surveys and extrapolation.
Photography and medical procedures like x-rays and mri’s allow us to match a person’s appearance with their skull shape. You can also do it post-mortem, again thanks to pictures.
Take all that info across a large number of people, combine and analyze it, and you get certain feature results. It really helps that we have actual bodies to study and figure out what soft tissue is supposed to be where.
There are also historical writings that can help fill in certain blanks. Was the population mainly dark haired, dark eyes, <insert-skin-tone>? You may get some of the exact details wrong like hair color and skin blemishes, but its not like there is a picture available to prove you are wrong.
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