Featured Image Credit: Cicero Moraes
Topics: Science, Technology
Callum Jones
There are plenty of things we can do to see what life would have been like in the past.
Whether that is through film, video games, or even visiting museums and historic locations to see the remains of what lived many years ago.
But with technology rapidly developing, there are quickly becoming new ways to discover things of the past.
No, we are not talking time travel just yet, though if there is a day that ever becomes reality, it will be truly remarkable.
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Today, we are talking about digital imagery, which has incredibly revealed the face of an Egyptian man that lived a whopping 35,000 years ago.
But how exactly was this incredible feat achieved?
Well, archaeologist, Moacir Elias Santos, and 3D designer, Cícero Moraes, from Brazil, used the skeleton remains of a man named, Nazlet Khater 2, found at an archaeological site in Egypt.
After finding the remains, anthropological analysis found that the skeleton remains being part of a man of African ancestry, who was aged between 17 and 29 at the time of his death.
Further analysis found that the man's height was around 5ft 3 inches - though that was only an approximate estimate.
After that, the team used a process known as facial approximation, which is a rather clever tool that archaeologists use to recreate the facial features of a long deceased person, by using its skeletal remains.
Moacir Santos, archaeologist at the Ciro Flamarion Cardoso Archaeology Museum, told CNN: "A few years ago, we were already working on a series of approximations related to human evolution, with the best-known fossil replicas.
"The videos were converted into photos and were used for the elaboration of the photogrammetry of the skull, which shaped the study."
For those not in the know, photogrammetry is the process of extracting 3D information from photographs, and in this case, after seeing the skeletal remains at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.
The whole point of the process is for experts to work out how people looked thousands of years ago, and how we have evolved as a human species.
Cícero Moraes, the designer, told CNN: "Using the skulls of living people in addition to work carried out in the forensic field... the probability that the image resembles what NK2 looked like is significantly high."