I'm curious to know how they knew the colour of their eyes, hair, skin etc. Is it possible to work that out from DNA? I'm only being nit-picky, the sculptures are brilliant.Brighton Museum's New Archeology Gallery Reconstructs Faces of Ancient Britons From South Coast
Forensic artist and sculptor, Oscar Nilsson, and the museum's senior keeper of collections, Richard Le Saux, have worked painstakingly for 14 months to not only bring the people back to life but also to tell their stories.
Patcham Woman - 210AD
A nail was embdedded into the back of her skull and Richard says she was impaled either just before or just after death.
Around this time there was concern that the body or spirit could rise after death and corpses were imapled with nails to fix the body into the grave.
There were further nails scattered in her grave, mainly by her knees, and she was found buried toe to toe with a man.
Whitehawk woman - lived 5,650 years ago
Her bones were found in 1933 in what now makes up part of Brighton race course.
She was a small and slender woman with dark skin and eyes.
Experts believe she was between 19 and 25-years-old when she passed away.
Tragically, the bones of a baby were found in her pelvis, indicating she died in childbirth, and was buried with good luck charms in her own grave.
Ditchling Road man - lived 4,287 years ago
This Bronze Age man is believed to be from the Beaker people, who died when he was between 25 and 35.
Life was tough for this chap. When he was aged between six and nine he suffered extreme malnutrition.
This meant he was gaunt and slightly shorter than average at just 5ft 6ins.
DNA results also show he had lost some teeth and was suffering from extreme tooth decay.
Neanderthal Woman
More at link.
I'm curious to know how they knew the colour of their eyes, hair, skin etc. Is it possible to work that out from DNA? I'm only being nit-picky, the sculptures are brilliant.
On the other hand New Scientist casts doubt..new analysis of the ancient man's DNA proves he's genetically similar to other dark-skinned individuals from the Mesolithic era found in Spain, Hungary, and Luxemborg whose DNA has already been sequenced.
one of the geneticists who performed the research says the conclusion is less certain, and according to others we are not even close to knowing the skin colour of any ancient human.
"known skin pigmentation genes, discovered primarily in E. Asian & European populations, don't explain the variation in skin pigmentation in African populations . The idea that there are really only 15 genes underlying skin pigmentation isn't correct".
A team of medieval historians working in the archives at the University of York has found evidence that a nun in the 14th century faked her own death and crafted a dummy “in the likeness of her body” in order to escape her convent and pursue – in the words of the archbishop of the time – “the way of carnal lust”.
A marginal note written in Latin and buried deep within one of the 16 heavy registers used by to record the business of the archbishops of York between 1304 and 1405 first alerted archivists to the adventures of the runaway nun. “To warn Joan of Leeds, lately nun of the house of St Clement by York, that she should return to her house,” runs the note written by archbishop William Melton and dated to 1318.
Melton, writing to inform the Dean of Beverley about the “scandalous rumour” he had heard about the arrival of the Benedictine nun Joan, claimed that Joan had “impudently cast aside the propriety of religion and the modesty of her sex”, and “out of a malicious mind simulating a bodily illness, she pretended to be dead, not dreading for the health of her soul, and with the help of numerous of her accomplices, evildoers, with malice aforethought, crafted a dummy in the likeness of her body in order to mislead the devoted faithful and she had no shame in procuring its burial in a sacred space amongst the religious of that place”.
After faking her own death, he continued, “and, in a cunning, nefarious manner … having turned her back on decency and the good of religion, seduced by indecency, she involved herself irreverently and perverted her path of life arrogantly to the way of carnal lust and away from poverty and obedience, and, having broken her vows and discarded the religious habit, she now wanders at large to the notorious peril to her soul and to the scandal of all of her order.”
Professor Sarah Rees Jones, principal investigator on the project, said the story of Joan’s escape, which she and her team discovered last week, was “extraordinary – like a Monty Python sketch”.
The scribes did not record whether Joan was returned to the convent or not. “Unfortunately, and this is really frustrating, we don’t know the outcome of the case,” said Rees Jones. “There are quite a lot of cases of monks and nuns who left their religious house. We don’t always get the full detail or know what the outcome was.”
A History of the County of York recounts how in 1301 a nun at the priory of St Clement named Cecily met “certain men” at the priory gate leading a saddled horse, “and, throwing off her nun’s habit, put on another robe and rode off with them to Darlington, where Gregory de Thornton was waiting for her, and with him she lived for three years or more”.
Although parts of some of the archbishops’ registers have been published in the past, they were generally untranslated from Latin. Funding of almost £1m from the Arts and Humanities Research Council means the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, in partnership with the National Archives, is now working to translate the 16 books and make their contents available online.
During the middle ages, the parchment volumes were carried by the archbishop’s officials while he travelled. After the English civil war in the 17th century, they were stored in London and returned to York in the late 18th century. Covering what Rees Jones calls “a fascinating and extremely turbulent period”, the volumes also span the Black Death, which ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351.
“Being a priest was one of the most dangerous jobs in Europe during that time as they visited the sick and administered last rites at deathbeds,” said Rees Jones. “Because so many priests had died, there weren’t enough people trained in Latin, so delivering sermons in English had to be adopted as the new status quo. The registers may shed new light on what it was like to live through this period and will perhaps give us a sense of how the church reasserted its authority after such catastrophic events.”
good find.
Has Thames ever been pronounced Terns?
I'm fond of the anecdote that when the American troops first arrived in the UK, begrudged locals described them as "Over paid, over sexed and over here!" to which the Americans responded by describing us as "Under paid, under sexed and under Eisenhower" ..
I'm curious to know how they knew the colour of their eyes, hair, skin etc. Is it possible to work that out from DNA? I'm only being nit-picky, the sculptures are brilliant.
I’ve been to Brighton, and the only mild surprise is that they didn’t depict all of them as minorities. lf they found a Saxon warrior complete with chariot, they’d reconstruct him as “A lesbian vegan holistic masseuse of colour, rocking a wheelchair”.
maximus otter
Great find!A handbook issued to WW2 U.S. troops stationed in Britain:
http://hardscrabblefarm.com/ww2/britain.htm
Brighton Museum reconstructs woman found in Brighton and - mirabile dictu! -she was dark-skinned.
Eye, hair and skin colour can be found in DNA, not sure about skin and hair textureI'm curious to know how they knew the colour of their eyes, hair, skin etc. Is it possible to work that out from DNA? I'm only being nit-picky, the sculptures are brilliant.
Errr, darker skin was the norm in early populations. Light skin colour only came into Europe with a migration from the Steppes about 6,000 BCEBrighton Museum reconstructs woman found in Brighton and - mirabile dictu! -she was dark-skinned.
I’ve been to Brighton, and the only mild surprise is that they didn’t depict all of them as minorities. lf they found a Saxon warrior complete with chariot, they’d reconstruct him as “A lesbian vegan holistic masseuse of colour, rocking a wheelchair”.
maximus otter
Yeah, even though it's now 2019 I do recognise the England described in that booklet. As I've been told, the Brits and the U.S. troops were constantly teasing each other but were also very fond of each other. A fun Cromer story I was told by an elderly English chap who used to be stationed in the building I was later living in was:Great find!
Having known a good many representatives of the target audience, and quite a few for whom this was surely assigned reading, I'd say whoever wrote this nailed it. The language and the approach were no doubt spot-on for the time and the troops. Most of the ones I knew would have had essentially zero experience with any actual British person, and it wasn't a lot different for me growing up in the Midwest in the 60s. My uncle who was a B-17 tail gunner had probably not been more than about 100 miles from his home in rural Minnesota at the time he enlisted. I know he went through quite a bit of culture shock when he got to England. I wish I knew more about his experiences, but like most of the WWII vets I knew, he really didn't like talking about it. Everyone respected that.
Brighton Museum reconstructs woman found in Brighton and - mirabile dictu! -she was dark-skinned.
I’ve been to Brighton, and the only mild surprise is that they didn’t depict all of them as minorities. lf they found a Saxon warrior complete with chariot, they’d reconstruct him as “A lesbian vegan holistic masseuse of colour, rocking a wheelchair”.
maximus otter
No skull so we won't get a similar reconstruction of the Red Lady of Paviland. Although I suppose she is now part of the conspiracy having been discovered to be the Red Man of Paviland.
When the creationist Buckland discovered the skeleton in 1823, his treatise misjudged both its age and gender. Buckland believed that human remains could not be older than the Biblical Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date to the Roman era. Buckland believed the skeleton was female largely because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth. These decorative items, combined with the skeleton's red dye, caused Buckland to mistakenly speculate that the remains belonged to a Roman prostitute or witch.
Aloha Wanderwell was an explorer, a vaudevillian and filmmaker, a female Indiana Jones, a wife and mother. She visited places no western man or woman had seen before. She was a figure of controversy, self-invention and marketing. The romance that informs her legend is both real and contrived.
Aloha responded to an ad declaring “Brains, Beauty & Breeches – World Tour Offer For Lucky Young Woman… Wanted to join an expedition!”, meeting Captain Wanderwell in Paris and securing a seat on this daring expedition.
I don't know if this lady has been mentioned before ...
Thats all i could find and there were no comments about her, so i thought it would be ok to mention her again?Only once - in relation to searching for Percy Fawcett after he disappeared in South America.
Aloha Wanderwell - great name for an explorer!
Thats all i could find and there were no comments about her, so i thought it would be ok to mention her again?
Aloha responded to an ad declaring “Brains, Beauty & Breeches – World Tour Offer For Lucky Young Woman… Wanted to join an expedition!”
Isn’t it depressing to know that, in 2019, the expedition would have been sued out of existence by the legion of the perpetually-offended before it even left Milton Keynes?
maximus otter
This is wonderful. Not very appropriate to my dad, but I can see that he read guidelines like these. He was as a USAF pharmacist in Crosby with a nice family with cute kids,A handbook issued to WW2 U.S. troops stationed in Britain:
http://hardscrabblefarm.com/ww2/britain.htm