Tag: tre

Tutankhamun’s face has been reconstructed by scientists, revealing a pharaoh who appears more like a “young student” than a king. An international team of academics from Brazil, Australia, and Italy used a digital model of Tutankhamun’s mummified skull to bring his features to life. The reconstruction portrays a youthful and delicate visage of a king who died over three thousand years ago when he was still a teenager.

Brazilian graphics expert Cicero Moraes, a co-author of the study, described Tutankhamun’s appearance as that of a young man with a delicate face, resembling more of a young student than a politician burdened with responsibilities. This interpretation adds an extra layer of intrigue to the historical figure.

Tutankhamun, known as the “boy king,” was famously discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter in November 1922 in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Reconstructing Tutankhamun’s face was particularly challenging for the international team since they did not have direct access to his skull. However, previous studies had recorded the skull measurements and provided reference images, which aided in the reconstruction process.

To create the digital model, the team concatenated traces of information from various sources and adjusted a virtual donor’s skull to match Tutankhamun’s proportions. They also recreated the size of the lips, position of the eyeballs, height of the ears, and front size of the nose based on statistical studies performed on CT scans of living individuals from different ancestries. Markers indicating the thickness of soft tissues in different areas were applied to the skull using data from modern Egyptians as a guide. The gradual reconstruction process aimed to create an objective representation of Tutankhamun’s face.

Subjective elements, such as eye color, were added to the reconstruction to humanize the subject further. Interestingly, this is not the first attempt to recreate Tutankhamun’s likeness. A previous reconstruction was made in 2005, and the new study’s authors noted the striking resemblance between the two reconstructions. The current reconstruction aligns with ancient depictions of Tutankhamun, including the famous depiction of his head on a lotus flower from his tomb treasure.

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 captivated the world’s attention. Inside the tomb, over 5,000 items were found, including a solid gold coffin, a funerary mask, thrones, furniture, and even food and wine. The project to recreate Tutankhamun’s face and head involved meticulous detective work, using available reference images, measurements, and modern techniques to reconstruct an accurate representation.

Cicero Moraes expressed confidence in the likeness they have achieved, stating that the projections and measurements are compatible with the real face in terms of general structure. The study’s authors are eager to continue studying and uncovering more pieces of ancient Egypt’s fascinating history.

Tutankhamun, who was revered as a god during his lifetime, died in 1323 BC and was succeeded by his advisor, Ay. The study, conducted by Moraes, Dr. Habicht, and their colleagues Francesco Galassi, Elena Varotto, and Thiago Beaini, will be published in the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology.

The remarkable discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter involved digging through rubble-filled passages until Carter caught a glimpse of the tomb through a small hole made in the masonry. Holding up a candle, he peered inside and famously responded to Carnarvon’s question of whether he could see anything with, “Yes, wonderful things.” The tomb, consisting of four rooms, contained over 5,000 royal treasures, including a dagger made from meteorite. These treasures had remained untouched for over 3,000 years. The innermost coffin within the chamber held the body of the Boy King.

Scientists in Siberia are claiming to have found the frozen remains of a new distinct species of pygmy mammoth. If confirmed, this could be proof that more than one species of dwarf mammoth once roamed Ice Age Earth.

This mammoth has something else unusual about it too. According to Dr Albert Protopopov, head of the department for the study of mammoth fauna at the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), talking to the Siberian Times: “Its hair looks golden in the Sun.”

The carcass of the adult mini-mammoth, which could be up to 50,000 years old, was discovered preserved in permafrost on Kotelny island, in the north of Sakha Republic, about 40 percent of which lies above the Arctic Circle, covered in permafrost.

Currently, the unfortunate creature is only visible at low tide as it is stuck in an inaccessible tidal area on the island, in between the Laptev and East Siberian Seas. Presently plans are being made to start excavating it in the summer of 2019.

However, there is plenty that they have managed to find out already about the diminutive beast.

It is around 2 meters (7 feet) in height, so roughly two-thirds the size of its closest neighbor, the woolly (Siberian) mammoth, which reached a shoulder height of up to 3.4 meters (11.2 feet), roughly the same as a modern African elephant. The North American imperial mammoth, however, was much larger and could reach over 4 meters (14 feet).

This mammoth likely stood 2/3 the size of a normal woolly mammoth. AuntSpray/Shutterstock
It’s fur also appears to be a golden strawberry blond color, giving it the nickname “Golden Mammoth” (no, not that one). Earlier this year, the remains of a baby woolly rhino were reconstructed to reveal it too sported a fluffy strawberry blond rug.

“We are yet to discover whether this is an anomaly, or something quite typical for this area – when a grown-up mammoth looks like a pygmy,” Dr Protopopov told the Siberian Times.

“We have had reports about small mammoths found in that particular area, both grown-ups and babies. But we had never come across a carcass. This is our first chance to study it.”

Protopopov and his team are convinced this specimen is an example of a new distinct species of dwarf mammoth that arose in the heyday of the creatures, the Karginsky interglacial, between 22,000 and 50,000 years ago. They argue that previous remains of dwarf mammoths found on both the Wrangel Islands of Siberia and the Channel Islands off California, are due to the “island effect”, where a group gets cut off from the main group and evolves separately.

“Our theory is that in this period the mammoths significantly rose in numbers – and this led to the biggest diversity of their forms,” he added. “I think that our new mammoth is not related to the Wrangel mammoth population. This was a different era and different case.”

Since Kotelny Island would have been attached to the mainland in the Ice Age, it’s not impossible. We’ll have to wait and see.