You need to have a very developed imagination in order to imagine a person in the form of a jigsaw puzzle that can be assembled with only its individual parts in hand. A similar imagination was possessed by the Soviet anthropologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences Mikhail Gerasimov, who in the 50s of the twentieth century developed a method for restoring a person's appearance from the bone structure of the skull. Gerasimov's method makes it possible to recreate facial features, taking into account certain relationships between the thickness of soft tissues and the characteristics of the skull.
For years, the scientist measured the thickness of the soft integument on the cuts of frozen heads of corpses, studied in great detail the attachment points of muscles and ligaments, dissecting the eye and nasal areas of the face. The result was the conclusion that the skull may well serve as a source of information about how tissues are woven on its surface, the relief of which can also be calculated.
Illustration by RIA Novosti. A. Polyanina
Now Gerasimov's students, working in the Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, founded by him, are already using much more accurate methods for measuring facial integuments using ultrasound. After all, it is one thing to measure cadaveric tissues, and it is another thing to examine thousands of people of different nationalities and races using ultrasound equipment. Thus, an extensive data bank was created on the thickness of the soft covers of various parts of the face of representatives of different ethnic groups.
Areas and points of the face where soft tissue thickness is measured. Frontal: 1. Metopine. 2. The brow. 3. Glabella nasal: 4. Nazion. 5. Rinion. 6. Lateral point of the nose zygomatic: 7. Maxillary. 8. Anterior zygomatic. 9. Zigion oral: 10. Supracanine. 11. The middle of the filter. 12. Extra-labial. 13. The lower lip. 14. The mandibular submental groove: 15. Pogonion. 16. Gnation. 17. The body of the lower jaw. 18. Edge of the lower jaw. 19. The branch of the lower jaw. 20. Gonion. Illustration by RIA Novosti. A. Polyanina
How are measurements recorded? The face is divided into zones with peaks, which are measured either by ultrasound, or by palpation-marking method, the essence of which is to probe some points of the skeleton with the fingers. This is how a face map is formed, similar to a topographic one. In order to accurately recreate the appearance of a person, the sculptor will then attach "pegs" with the indicated height dimensions to the copy of the skull, these are the points marked by scientists. With the accumulation of data, the number of points, that is, the details of the face map, increases all the time. This is more than a hundred measuring and descriptive parameters with measurements of some bone structures.
The representatives of different ethnic groups were examined: Russians, Lithuanians, Armenians, Abkhazians, Koreans, Buryats, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Bashkirs. Interestingly, the differences in the thickness of soft tissues are small, the differences are more significant between men and women.
Fragment of the table “ Standards of the thickness of the soft tissues of the face (in millimeters), obtained by the method of ultrasound sensing in living people ” (E. Veselovskaya, 1997). Illustration by RIA Novosti. A. Polyanina
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Men have a greater thickness of the integument at the metopion point, in the nose, in the perioral zone and on the lower jaw (coefficient values with a negative sign), in women, the tissue thickness is greater in the entire zygomatic zone, on the glabella, as well as in the region of the brow and in the middle of the body lower jaw.
However, some parts of the puzzle are difficult to pick up. So, it is not completely clear how to determine the reliefs of the cartilaginous part of the nose. It became possible to restore the general direction and outline of its outer part after a scrupulous study by the Russian anthropologist Galina Lebedinskaya. She analyzed hundreds of radiographs and came to the conclusion that the contour of the cartilaginous part of the external nose is a mirror image of the contour of the pear-shaped opening relative to a line drawn through the rhinion point parallel to the straight line connecting the anthropometric points of the nasion and the prostion.
Scheme for the construction of the external nose. Illustration by RIA Novosti. A. Polyanina
In the above illustration, it is clearly seen that line No. 1 divides the entire array of cartilage into two symmetrical halves. However, it is still impossible to understand how exactly the relief of the tip of the nose is formed.
And yet, gradually, unknown pieces of the puzzle are being recreated through new research. Previously undetermined parameters - the width of the nose and mouth, the height of the ear, and the structural features of the eye area - are being refined and successfully predicted. For example, the staff of the Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in particular, Doctor of Historical Sciences Elizaveta Veselovskaya, proposed the program "Algorithm of appearance", which presents dimensional characteristics, as well as descriptive parameters for calculating lifetime facial features. This program is necessary not only for historians, but also for criminologists. For the first time, the laboratory staff proposed and tested a technique for composing a verbal portrait based on the skull of an unidentified person. According to a number of examinations carried out using this method, the missing people were identified.
And yet, as Elizaveta Veselovskaya explains in her doctoral dissertation “Anthropological reconstruction of a person's appearance. Development and application of new methodological approaches”,“it should be noted that, despite its importance, the program “Algorithm of appearance” still did not solve all the issues of matching the details of the external appearance and underlying cranial structures. Individual features of the face, such as the shape of the painted part of the lips, the type of eye cut, the details of the tip of the nose, the pattern of the auricle, and some others still cannot be reproduced with great accuracy and require further scientific research and, possibly, other research methods. Research work to improve the method of facial reconstruction from the skull will, of course, continue."
Anna Urmantseva