In that context, the Neandertal article concept presented an opportunity to do something special. The thrust of the story was “what’s new?” So the thrust of the visuals became “what’s new?” as well. And what was new was genetic information that could have implications for appearance. This new genetic information combined with new skeletal information is what made us feel that a compelling visual could be produced by reconstructing a three-dimensional Neandertal. We also thought that modeling a woman would be a fresh approach.

Is it the same sort of reconstruction a scientist would make? No. Was it based on good information and prepared in consultation with scientists? Yes.

As I learned when I was Art Director, there are only a few artists in the world who are qualified to do such reconstructions. The Kennis brothers, based in the Netherlands, are two of them. Their work is well known from European museums.

There is no question there is a lot of artistry in such reconstructions, but in my opinion, one should not be too critical of them. We may not know whether a Neandertal had straight or curly hair, but an artist does not have the luxury of leaving the model bald. Our goals are to make these reconstructions as accurate as possible and as attractive as possible. They are what they are, a best guess.

Great read, I totally landed on this by complete whim.

Thanks for the excellent comment. You hit some key points that I didn’t make either because I didn’t think about it or couldn’t articulate.

While the National Geographic Society does fund some basic science research and fieldwork, I no longer consider them to be an academic institution but rather science entertainers. This reconstruction is a clear example of their decision to make something entertaining.

Why?

As mentioned, it is not clear how many individuals were used to make model. Multiple individuals would affect the final outcome. And differences in age and sex, even antiquity and locality can affect the morphology represented.

Furthermore, if multiple individuals were used, which they were, the people responsible for the reconstruction possibly picked and chose which definitive alleles responsible for skin, eye, and hair color phenotype. As you mentioned, other alleles, such as curly/straight hair and the shape of the upper eyelid are also genetically regulated and vary amongst people.

That all said, reconstructions of human ancestors have in the past been subject to a bit more artistic freedom. In other words, we’ve assumed that Neandertals have been light skinned since they are found throughout Eurasia. But, we haven’t known for sure until recent advances in ancient DNA sequencing. We can now identify some more definitive traits without conjecture.

Anyways, I appreciate the comment.

Kambiz

Also I find odd she has such a narrow jaw and such an apparently high forehead. Just make a search for “neanderthal skull” and you’ll see that they had narrow foreheads with prominent brow ridges, proportionally very large faces and, in most cases, wide nose cavities like those modernly found typically among Black Africans (though other nose types also appear now and then).

Certainly I do not know how was her specific skull anyhow. But from the article I gather that they have no idea on how were other traits like hair type (why straight?), eyes (why the partial epicanthic fold?), that have certainly been imagined from their own fantasy.

Calling this the first Neanderthal reconstruction based on DNA is pure nonsense.