ok ok ok I’m so sorry but I HAVE to talk about this
there’s something so loving about what tom björklund does and just- fuck I’m foaming at the mouth here
facial reconstruction isn’t a new concept (see the Kennewick Man/Patrick Stewart incident) but it’s difficult to find people that are truly good at it! genuinely there is a big gap in this field because there just aren’t a lot of people who do it professionally!
facial reconstruction, especially from bone or bone fragments, is such a fascinating intersection of art and science, and a tremendous amount of care is put into determining what these people might have looked like.
with that said, it’s VERY easy to screw it up
configuring muscle attachments and fat distribution is genuinely *very* difficult to do, and when you do it badly, you get this (pictured above). by adding too much muscle, they gave this 600 year old man a VERY interesting jawline (notice that the bottom of the chin doesn’t match up with the bone at all!) and they *really* made him look older than he was. would you believe me if I said that he was estimated to only be 46 years old?
basically I’m just REALLY excited about Tom Björklund’s art because it’s amazing work, just from an anthropology perspective
facial reconstructions aren’t just an artsy thing that you can just say “oh, that’s cool!” to
by giving these people faces, even if they aren’t always accurate, we open the doors for the average person to connect with the past at a very human level. sure, looking at bones is cool, but looking at art of someone that lived millions of years ago is *incredible*
looking at a picture of a boy that lived millions of years ago and thinking “yeah, he would’ve loved Minecraft” is EXACTLY the reaction that these pieces are meant to elicit
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