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The partial skull used to reconstruct the face of this man was discovered with other human crania and animal jawbones that had been deposited in a Swedish lake around 6,000 B.C. The artist who reconstructed this man chose to give him a cape made from wild boar—one of the animal species also found in the lake.
He’s physically imposing, somewhere in his 50s, with a wiry gray beard disappearing into his wild boar cloak. His broad chest is dabbed with chalk, and his pale blue eyes are narrowed, as if he’s spotting something in the distance. Dubbed “Ludvig,“ he lived in northern Europe some 8,000 years ago.
Too bad Ludvig can’t talk, though, because researchers have many questions for him.
This is the first facial reconstruction from human remains excavated about a decade ago in south-central Sweden at Kanaljorden, a curious archaeological site where, sometime around 6,000 B.C., animal and human bones had been deliberately arranged on a submerged stone platform in the center of a small lake. Kanaljorden made international headlines in 2018 when researchers published a report on the excavation, noting that wood preserved inside two of the skulls indicated that at least some of the skulls had been mounted on stakes. It was like nothing the scientists had seen before.
“It’s a very fascinating site to work with, and quite complex,” says Fredrik Hallgren, director of the Kanaljorden project for Sweden’s The Cultural Heritage Foundation.
The facial reconstruction was commissioned by the Charlottenborgs slott, a museum in the nearby town of Motala, where it goes on exhibit tomorrow. The museum is housed in a 17th-century manor house built by count Ludvig Wierich Lewenhaupt—ancient Ludvig’s reverse namesake.
Hannah Graffman, head of culture and leisure for Motala, said the reconstruction would give townspeople the opportunity to see what one of its earliest residents looked like. His nickname, she concedes, is “not really a Stone-Age name, though.”
Kanaljorden, which was excavated between 2009 and 2014, is a particularly fascinating site for archaeologists who study the Scandinavian Mesolithic, a period after the last glaciers retreated from the region and during which hunter gather groups from both western mainland Europe and northeast Europe began to move in around 11,000 years ago.
The remains at Kanaljorden are unlike most other Scandinavian Mesolithic burials, which tend to be burials in the ground. Here, around 6,000 B.C., the crania of nine men and women were deliberately placed in the lake—perhaps all mounted on stakes—and interspersed with the jawbones (but not crania) of several local animal species, including wild boar, bear, deer, and badger.
“It's almost like the humans and animals complement each other in a symbolic way,” says Hallgren.
The unusual nature of Kanaljorden struck archaeologist and sculptor Oscar Nilsson, who studied photographs from the site to try to understand what may have motivated people back then to arrange carefully and submerge the bones.
Adelasius Ebalchus lived in northern Switzerland 1,300 years ago. He was in his late teens or early twenties when he died.
Patcham Woman was a resident of Roman Britain, and her burial may be a 1,700-year-old crime scene: She was discovered by ditch diggers in 1936, buried in a fairly deep pit with a nail driven deep into the back of her skull. More nails were scattered by her knees, and a male skeleton was found lying feet-to-feet with her. Signs of stress and disease in her spine and joints show she led a hard physical life before dying sometime between the ages of 25 and 35.
Discovered in 1985 during building works in Brighton, UK, Stafford Road Man is among the first wave of Saxons to enter Britain after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Buried with a spear and a knife around 500 A.D., he lived an unusually long and active life and died after the age of 45.
Artifacts from southern England show that both Neanderthals, such as this woman, and modern humans were residents of what is now southern England some 40,000 years ago.
Ditchling Road Man, named for the road-widening project that revealed his remains in 1921, was part of the first wave of farmers from continental Europe that arrived in Britain with their distinctive Beaker pottery around 2,400 B.C. His remains show that he suffered several periods of malnutrition while growing up, which may have slightly stunted his growth. Ditchling Road Man died between the ages of 25 and 35 and was buried with a Beaker vessel by his feet and a small number of snail shells next to his mouth.
Facial features have "smoothed out" over millennia, and humans look less masculine today, says reconstructor Oscar Nilsson, who recreated this face of a teenager who lived in Greece 9,000 years ago.
The reconstruction of the "Huarmey Queen" is based on her 1,200-year-old remains from Peru. It took specialist Oscar Nilsson 220 hours to complete.
“When you look at the skulls, how they were placed, you just look into their world of imagination, their religion,” he says.
Researchers were able to obtain DNA data from six of the nine skulls, enabling them to determine the skin, hair, and eye color of individuals. Some Mesolithic Europeans likely had a darker skin tone than modern inhabitants, a fact reflected in the recent recreationsof two women who lived in Scandinavia around the time of Ludvig or later. While Ludvig is light-skinned and light-eyed, DNA from a female skull that will be reconstructed next year indicates that she was blonde but darker skinned, attesting to the genetic complexity of Scandinavia at that time.
Graffman is eager to see how Ludvig is received by the 21st-century residents of Motala, and views the reconstruction as a way to build bridges between people across space and time.
“That's what we try to do in all kinds of different areas, whether it's like this [reconstruction] or when we read books about other people or we see art that connect us,” she says. “I think it’s important to find the connections between people.”
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