This Stone Age man's jawless skull was found on a spike. Here's what he looked like.

[Judi Lynn]

By Laura Geggel - Associate Editor 7 hours ago



We may never know why the skull of a Stone Age man ended up on a stake in a mysterious underwater grave 8,000 years ago, but thanks to a new facial reconstruction, we can see what he probably looked like before he died.

Archaeologists discovered the man's skull, as well as the remains of at least 10 other Stone Age adults and an infant, in 2012 at the bottom of what used to be a small lake in what is now Motala, a municipality in eastern-central Sweden. However, only one of the adults had a jaw; the rest were jawless, and two of the skulls had been placed on stakes sticking out from the lake's surface.

Now, a 3D facial reconstruction reveals the likeness of one of those jawless skulls. Oscar Nilsson, a forensic artist based in Sweden, used this skull as well as genetic and anatomical information gleaned from it to create a bust of the man — a blue-eyed, brown-haired and pale-skinned individual in his 50s.

Nilsson didn't want to damage the ancient skull, so he took a CT (computed tomography) scan of the specimen and used that data to print a 3D replica of it in vinyl plastic. From there, Nilsson determined how thick to make the man's facial muscles and skin based on forensic methods that focus on factors such as the man's weight, height and ethnicity. For instance, this man was from a group of hunters and gatherers whose genetic heritage included people who came to Scandinavia from the north and east, as well as from the south about 2,000 years earlier, Nilsson said.

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