Discover the face of a man buried 9,500 years ago in the West Bank

Thanks to new technologies, scientists have succeeded in digitally reconstructing the face of a man who lived 9,500 years ago.

The skull of the individual in question was found in 1953 in the ancient biblical city of Jericho, in the West Bank, reports the Live Science site.

A model of this face was published on Thursday December 22, 2022 in the

magazine .

Jericho plastered skull reconstruction.

Looks like some of them underwent head binding or artificial cranial deformation of some kind.

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Seven other plaster-covered skulls were discovered at the time by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon (1906-1978).

They have since been kept in the British Museum in London (United Kingdom).

As a reminder, Jericho is a colony that would have been continuously inhabited for approximately 11,000 years.

Plaster and shells

About fifty other skulls dating from the same period were then discovered in this region.

The remains were covered with earth and shells had been embedded in the sockets.

Some had brown paint marks.

According to experts, these skulls would have been the subject of funerary rituals and practices.

But how did scientists go about reconstructing the face of a man who lived nearly 10,000 years ago?

They used X-ray microtomography, an X-ray to generate a virtual 3D model.

This technology is based on thousands of x-rays of living people.

An elongated skull

However, unlike the precise measurements of one of the Jericho skulls published in 2016 by the British Museum, this new virtual reconstruction uses "anatomical deformations and statistical projections derived from CT scans", explained the Brazilian specialist in 3D creation Cicero Moraes, also project manager.

According to him, this technique allows “greater structural, anatomical and statistical coherence”.

The model published in

 shows an elderly male face whose age fluctuates between 30 and 40 years old.

According to the researchers, he would have dark hair and a beard.

He had a more elongated skull than average, which could be the result of voluntary deformation in his early years by means of tight binding.

This rather frequent cultural practice has been observed in particular in certain pre-Inca civilizations.

Scientists now hope to continue their digital reconstruction work based on other skulls unearthed in Jericho.

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• Science

• Archeology

• West Bank

• 3d

• Prehistory