Revealed: Faces of Keeladi men; 3D recon by UK lab and researchers brings 2,500-year-old skulls from Tamil Nadu into shape
FIRST LOOK: These faces are predominantly south Indian with a touch of West Eurasian and Austro-Asiatic characteristics
A rchaeological excavations and carbon dating point to one of the oldest civilizations thriving at Keeladi, 12km southeast of Madurai in Tamil Nadu, in 6th century BCE. Now, they've put faces to at least two men who walked this earth some 2,500 years ago.
South Indian with traces of ancestral West Eurasian (Iranian) hunter-gatherers and ancestral Austro-Asiatic people — that's how researchers at Madurai Kamaraj University describe the facial features reconstructed on two skulls with help from Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.
The skulls were found at Kondagai, a burial site around 800m from the main excavation site. Further DNA studies are needed to pinpoint the ancestry based on genetics, they say.
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'We used a computer-assisted 3D facial reconstruction system to rebuild the facial musculature and estimate facial features following anatomical and anthropometrical standards,' said Professor Caroline Wilkinson, director of Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University, UK. The lower halves of the faces were more guesstimate; reconstruction of the upper halves was more accurate. 'As the lower jaws of the skulls were missing, we used orthodontic standards to estimate the shapes of the mandibles from cranial measurements and planes,' said Prof Wilkinson.
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Researchers used forensic guidelines for facial reconstruction created from the study of clinical images of living people. After obtaining CT scanned images of the skulls from Kondagai, they estimated the tissue depth at various points of the skulls following published data of modern south Indians.
'It is 80% science and 20% art'
They used digital sculpting to recreate muscle, fat and skin while the placement and size of facial features (eyes, nose and mouth) were estimated based on the skulls' characteristics and anatomical relationships.
Using a photographic database, researchers assigned colours and textures for the skin, hair and eyes.
'It is 80% science and 20% art,' said professor G Kumaresan, department of genetics, Madurai Kamaraj University, which scanned and sent images of the skulls to Liverpool. He said the reconstructed faces, along with DNA data, will help trace the ancestry of Tamils who lived in the Sangam age.
Keeladi has been at the centre of a tussle between the Union and state govts over its antiquity.
Last month, the Archaeological Survey of India asked its archaeologist K Amarnath Ramakrishna, who unearthed the Sangam age brick structure at Keeladi in 2015-16 and dated the site to 8th century BCE, to revise his report quoting unnamed experts who said it could be no older than the 3rd century BCE.
The Tamil Nadu state archaeology department, which took over the excavation from ASI in 2018 after the courts intervened, has since obtained 29 radiocarbon dates between 6th century BCE and 2nd century CE at Keeladi.
Researchers from Madurai Kamaraj University are analysing DNA from the Kondagai urns in collaboration with the department of genetics at Harvard University in the US.
'Work is in progress to obtain a large number of DNA markers and compare them with global reference populations to understand the routes of migration and admixture of the ancient inhabitants of Kondagai and Keeladi,' Kumaresan said.
After studying the contents of the burial urns excavated from Kondagai, researchers estimated that most of the skeletal remains were of people aged around 50 years.
'There are many criteria such as dental wear patterns, expression of sutural lines, presence of arthritic lesions and general size of the bone that can tell us about age,' said anthropologist Veena Mushrif Tripathy from Deccan College in Pune. She studied the bone remains at Kondagai and Kodumanal.
'The stature estimation is feasible for only 11 skeleton remains at Kondagai. Though it is insufficient to measure the height of the entire Kondagai population, the average height of males was 170.82cm (5ft 7') while females was 157.74 cm (5ft 2'), which is comparable to Kodumanal where stature estimation was conducted on five skeletal remains,' she added.
Researchers identify the sex of the skeleton remains based on pelvic bone and skull morphology.
'Though reconstructing faces is common throughout the world, in South India, we have attempted it for the first time at Keeladi,' said archaeologist K Rajan, advisor to the Tamil Nadu department of archaeology.
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