Centuries-old mummies from the Andes of Colombia have been digitally unmasked and virtually reconstructed, revealing how they may have looked during their lifetimes.
These individuals, who lived sometime between the 13th and 18th centuries, were buried with death masks covering their faces and jaws. They’re the only Colombian examples of a cultural practice otherwise common for communities in other parts of pre-Columbian South America. However, as their graves were looted, little was known about these four individuals and their archaeological context.
These reconstructions highlight “the fascinating cultural practices” of the Indigenous peoples who lived in South America, Jessica Liu, the project manager for Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K, said in a statement about the project.
The mummies are of a 6- to 7-year-old child, a female in her 60s and two young adult males, all with stylized masks made of resin, clay, wax and maize attached to their faces. All the masks are damaged, with missing noses and chunks along the base, but some ornamental beads outlining the eyes remain. The individuals were from pre-Hispanic populations in the Eastern Cordillera, a region in the Colombian Andes, with radiocarbon dating indicating they lived between 1216 and 1797.
CT scans were performed on the masked skulls. CT scans use X-rays to generate virtual 3D images by taking lots of images of 2D slices of a sample and putting them together. Because of this, the team could “effectively unmask the skull digitally” by removing the layers containing the mask, Liu told Live Science.
Next, the researchers used specialized software and a haptic touch stylus pen to superimpose muscles, soft tissue and fat onto the digitally unmasked skulls. Liu said this is like virtual sculpting, where you use the scaffolding of the skull to get the tissue to perfectly fit the individual.
The team used average facial tissue depth data from modern-day adult male Colombians to add the soft tissue to the two young adult male…
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