Antrocom NPO patronises the exhibit "FACES. The Many Visages of Human History"

Antrocom nonprofit organization patronises the exhibit FACES. The Many Visages of Human History, which is held in the exhibition halls of the University Centre for Museums in Padua from February 14 to June 14, 2015.

The exhibition is the natural continuation of the Taung Project that, among other activities, also produced the reconstruction of the face of Saint Anthony, which has had great resonance among national and international media.

The faces tell our identity and our history: a personal story, but also the evolutionary history of our species. The face is anatomy, physics, physiology; but it is also a symbol, culture and interpretation.

The aim of the exhibition is to tell the various meanings that a face has and can acquire, thanks to finds and three-dimensional reconstructions of great visual impact. The scientific direction and supervision of the exposure are committed to Telmo Pievani and Nicola Carrara, while the three-dimensional and technological fulfilments are entrusted to Arc-Team and Cicero Moraes.

It is indeed a very special event that does not stop at mere display of artifacts, but it is a moment of reflection on forensic techniques used for the reconstruction of the face and on their scientific methodology. A moment that takes advantage of the most modern information technologies of modelling and sculptural development, with tests based on tomographies and original casts.

The exhibition seeks to reflect on the problems of management, usability and preservation of artifacts, especially if they are very fragile as the finds of biological origin.

Another peculiarity of the exhibition "FACES" is the will of the organizers to spread the potentialities offered by the open source world: not only using softwares with this kind of license, but by sharing the obtained three-dimensional models in an open and transparent way, with the opportunity to improve the realized work by other researchers scattered in different countries.

The exhibition is organized into five main themes:

1 - Let's face the human diversity: our origins through the casts of the main hominin fossils and their facial reconstructions, recreated with special forensic softwares and presented through augmented reality technologies. The exhibit also will present newly discovered species (Ardipithecus, Australopithecus sediba, Homo floresiensis) and, for the first time ever, the facial reconstructions of early hominins came out of Africa about 1.8 million years ago, discovered in Dmanisi site in Georgia (Homo georgicus).
The list of hominins on display:

• Sahelanthropus
• Ardipithecus ramidus
• Kenyanthropus platyops
• Australopithecus afarensis
• Australopithecus africanus (Mrs. Pless and Taung child)
• Australopithecus robustus (Paranthropus robustus)
• Paranthropus boisei
• Australopithecus sediba
• Homo habilis
• Homo ergaster (Turkana boy)
• Homo erectus (H. pekinensis)
• Homo neanderthalensis
• Homo rhodesiensis (H. heidelbergensis)
• Homo heidelbergensis (Bodo)
• Homo floresiensis
• Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon)
• Homo sapiens (Idautu)
• Homo georgicus 1 (classic cast, Zvedza)
• Homo georgicus 2 (old)
• Homo georgicus 3 (Mzia)
• Homo georgicus 5 (2005)

2 - One face, one race? Not really: the concept of "human race" is scientifically inconsistent. For example, the difference in DNA between an African pygmy and a European is only slightly higher than that the one we can observe between two pygmies or between two Europeans: we are all relatives and all different. Humanity is one!

3 - Faces from the past: five faces emerge from time. Five faces linked to, in different ways, the city of Padua. The oldest one belongs to an Egyptian priest of the Ptolemaic Period, whose mummy is preserved at the Museum of Anthropology. After the anticipation of June 10, 2014, the exhibit will propose again the reconstruction of the face of St. Anthony, along with the one of  Blessed Luca Belludi. The exhibition will give to the face of Francesco Petrarca, reconstructed for the first time, a voice to read the sonnet that opens the Canzoniere. The face of Giambattista Morgagni introduces the figure of another illustrious Paduan citizen, considered the father of contemporary pathological anatomy.

4 - The face as a mirror: famous people have dealt with physiognomy and phrenology: for a long time - as many popular sayings declare - it was considered that the moral qualities of a person were reflected in the external appearance, particularly in the visage. Removing the tinsels of old theories, the scientific study of the faces is continued over time because, undeniably, the face says a lot about us and our history, from both a personal and species point of view.

5 - From the face to the mask: the symbolic visage: covering the face is a gesture that distinguishes us from other animals. This is not a refined technique of mimicry because, although masked, we interact with others: the masks are rather fascinating symbolic territories. The masks on display are the most significant of the Museum of Anthropology, coming from different ethnographic collections around the world. Further, the contribution from the precious collaboration with the "Amleto and Donato Sartori" International Museum of the Mask at Abano Terme (Padua) enriches the section.

Informations:

Website: FACES. The Many Visages of Human History (Italian language)
Facebook page: FACES. The Many Visages of Human History

Location and opening time
Exhibition halls of the University Centre for Museums
via Botanical Garden, 15 - Padua
February-March: Monday-Friday 9:00 to 13:00; Saturday and Sunday 9:00 to 17:00
April-June: Monday-Friday 9:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 19:00; Saturday, Sunday and holidays 10.00-18.00

Informations and reservations
Bookings Starting from January 12, 2015
Phone: 049 2010270
Website: VivaTicket

Tickets
Full price: € 8,00
Reduced: € 6.00 (employees of the University of Padua, students of all levels, over 65, visitors with full ticket for the Botanical Garden or for the “Amleto and Donato Sartori" International Museum of the Mask  (Abano Terme, Padua)
Reduced for schools: € 4.00

Groups (minimum 10, maximum 20 people): € 6.00
Guided tour for groups (minimum 10, maximum 20 people - mandatory reservation): € 80.00
Guided tours for individuals (mandatory reservation): € 8.00

Presenting the full ticket of the exhibition "FACES. The many visages of human history", you will be entitled to reduced ticket to visit the "Amleto and Donato Sartori" International Museum of the Mask  (Abano Terme, Padua)

Homo habilis - forensic facial reconstruction step-by-step (screenshots)

Last but not least, I finished the reconstruction of a Homo habilis to be exposed at an event about human evolution in May 2013.

I chose to close with this model because I saw an opportunity to test a new methodology.

Upon receiving the skull reconstructed by Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos, it was evident that besides not being very symmetrical parts were missing.

To harmonize the view without losing data, was enough to mirror the object in the X axis But there was still part of the zygomatic arches, and jaw.

Through deformation via Edit Mode (Blender 3D) with Connected activated, it was possible to deform the skull of a chimpanzee until it to conform with the model scanned and imaged.

The details of the reconstruction can be seen in an album I created in Picasaweb:

http://plus.google.com/photos/115430171389306289690/albums/5853134067479146481

Follow the step-by-step via screenshot and see how the work was produced, starting in the import of the skull and ending in the final render.

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These hominids reconstructions are "sons" of Taung Project.

It is a group work by internet in Italy and Brazil.

So, I have to thank some people to make this project possible:

Alesandro and Luca Bezzi (IT)

Giuseppe Naponiello (IT)

Arc-Team (IT)

Moreno Tiziani, Antrocom (IT)

Dr. Nicola Carrara (IT)

Antropological Museum of Padua (IT)

Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos (BR)

Vivian Noitel Valim Tedardi (BR)

Thank you very much!

The Taung Child

Dr. Nicola Carrara, curator of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua, sent us a note on the Taung project which we willingly share:

The Paleoanthropology is littered with nicknames assigned to various discovered hominin fossils: Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), Mrs Ples (Australopithecus africanus), Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus), Twiggy (Homo habilis), the Turkana Boy (Homo ergaster), The Hobbit (Homo floresiensis), the old man of Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens) are some of the most famous examples.

Naming the living beings is one of the tasks of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Giving a name to someone is the first way to know him, take him into our circle and, somehow, pigeonholing him.

But the name alone is not enough. To know someone, we also need to see his face. Name and Face are an inseparable pair to frame a person, so much that you go often in crisis when someone greets us, and we identify his face, but we can not remember the associated name.

Or, when you go back with memories, you feel uncomfortable with the fact that we remember the name of some people but not the features. Incidents of this type are common and show a fundamental process of our brain: we are better when we know a person's name and his aspect!

The Taung child (Australopithecus africanus) is a fundamental fossil in the history of Paleoanthropology. Discovered by Raymond Dart at Taung, South Africa, in 1924, the find consisted of the entire face, including teeth and jaws, and the endocranial cast of the brain. Dated between 2 and 3 million of years ago, the child was about 3 years old and had a cranial capacity of 410 cc, which would have been 440 cc in adulthood.

The fossil surprised the discoverer for the modernity of some of its features: the large and "rounded" brain, the small canines, different from those of apes, and especially the relatively advanced position of the foramen magnum compatible with bipedalism.

The cast of this fossil is in many museums around the world, and it's the evidence of the evolutionary history of our species. The Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua keeps three copies of this find, along with those of many other Hominins.

When I was approached to join the "Taung" project, the first feeling was that of curiosity: I could finally know how the face of the child looked like, whose fossilized skull was in the closet behind my desk!

The curiosity was fueled by the various progresses of the work of Arc-Team that reached me through dr. Moreno Tiziani. Since a few weeks, the strictly scientific work of the team gave a face to the Taung child.

As an anthropologist and a curator of a museum, this result is very important. All the museography linked to human evolution is moving for some time to make our ancestors more human, taking away from the head the mistaken belief of the oneness of our humanity. There were many ways of being "human" and there have been many attempts to reach humanity. The Taung child is fully embedded in this story.

The times when the French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, between 1911 and 1913, reconstructing erroneously the skeleton of the Neanderthal of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, removed him from humanity because incapable, because of its anatomy, to "raise his eyes to heaven", are really far.

Today, thanks to the dedicated work of many scholars such as Arc-Team, when I open the closet behind my desk it's nice to see a familiar face.

Padua, december 4, 2012
Nicola Carrara

Translation: Moreno Tiziani