Homo naledi

As time goes by we noticed that the post we should write are always more and more, while our free is decreasing. Today I have a little bit of extra-time, as I am travelling on the train, so I decided to publish some other data referred to the open source exhibition "Facce", we organized in Padua in 2015 (from an idea of the curator of the Anthropological Museum of the University Nicola Carrara). 

As maybe you know, the exhibition was based on the topic of human faces and one section ("Guardiamo in faccia la diversità umana") was dedicated to human evolution. This section has been presented this year also in Genoa (in the Doge's Palace) at the Science Festival 2016. We already published some of the 20 facial reconstructions of hominini, performed with the technique we developed (Coherent Anatomical Deformation). 

Here I would like to present the new entry of the Genoa's exhibition: The Homo naledi:

Facial reconstruction of Homo naledi

As always, the Facial Recosntruction has been performed by Cicero Moraes (Arc-Team), while the scientific validation has bees done by Telmo Pievani and Nicola Carrara (University of Padua). On the contrary of what happened for most of the other paeoartistic reconstructions, this time it has not been necessary to scan the cast of specimen, but we could use directly the composite skull of Homo naledi (based on DH1 and DH3), constructed by Prof. Peter Schmid in September 2015, as a Courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand and the Dinaledi project. The files were downloaded from www.MorphoSource.org, Duke University.

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)

AnthropoloG+

Hi all,

this post is nothing serious, maybe just fun, but somehow interesting. 

Today I was reading last post of Cicero Moraes in G+; it regards an exposition about about evolutionary anthropology which will soon take place in Brazil. I will not write about this exposition here, because I hope that Cicero will do a post in the next days, but I want to report what I noticed when I loaded the poster of the exhibition in G+ (you can see it in the image below)...

Poster of the exhibition (by Cicero Moraes)

... I knew that G+ added a facial recognition application, so that it is now simpler to find human faces in the user's uploaded pictures, what I did not expected was that G+ tried to recognize the faces inside the exhibition's poster. The result is what you can see in the short clip below:

the Taung Child (Australopithecus africanus), the Australopithecus afarensis and the Homo habilis are not considered human faces by G+. On the contrary, the facial recognition application is able to find the Turkana Boy (Homo erectus), the Homo floresiensis, the Homo erectus pekinensis, the Homo heidelbergensis, the Homo neanderthalensis and, of course, the Cro-Magnon (early Homo sapiens sapiens). 

To verify that the facial recognition was not due to Cicero tags, I downloaded the image and uploaded again on my account and... I get the same result. Moreover, when I uploaded the picture, the software asked me to tag the people of the "photo", recognizing the same six faces, as you can see in the image below.

The facial recognition during uploading process

I do not know if this report can be interesting for an anthropologist; maybe Moreno Tiziani could better analyze this phenomenon, but I just wanted to inform you about this strange anthropological attitude of a social network, let's say this AnthropoloG+ application :).