Friday, February 25, 2011

I've seen this face before


The above picture is the reconstructed picture of Otzi, the man whose body was discovered in a glacier some 5,300 years after his death.  Scientists have spent years pouring over his body and clothing to discover details that bones alone cannot tell. 

A Dutch team have used the data taken from his face and skull to construct an image of how he appeared at the time of his death.  This face would fit in in any rural community where hard work in the outdoors is the norm.  I've seen faces like this sitting around a stove in a country store in the South.  If you shaved it, it would resemble the older farmers who came into town for church in North Dakota.  In Arizona, it's the face of a rancher who's tanned so thoroughly that the color never fades.

In short, this man was a man the same as any of us.  He is care worn, but still human.  He was not a brute, or a shaved ape (no more than the rest of us, anyway).  The only difference was that he lived in an age where all lives were hard lives. 

2 comments:

Old NFO said...

Good point! We are not as different as everyone wants to portray!

On a Wing and a Whim said...

Times change. People - people are still people. We're not so highly advanced that we can look far down on our ancestors, but plenty o' folks want to push down the past so they can feel they're better without doing the work to be so.

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