translated from Spanish: Thus was the face of Naharon Eva

INAH CICERO Moraesvivio more than 13,000 years ago in what is now territory of Mexico.
And nearly two decades after his remains were found in the depths of a cave, the face of Naharon Eva, the oldest woman in America, it was revealed.
Digital reconstruction of the factions of the young woman was commissioned by the Institute of anthropology and history of Mexico (INAH), Cicero Moraes Brazilian Designer, famous to virtually recreate the faces of historical figures.
“It took two decades since the first meeting I had with the fossil remains of Naharon Eva inside the cave and more than 13,600 years to finally get to know his face”, told BBC News the speleologist and underwater researcher Octavio de el Río researcher of the INAH and leader of the team that discovered the bones in the year 2000.
At that time, river it did not suspect the antiquity of the bone fragments had been found.
“The dates were made in three different laboratories, coinciding all at 13,600 years old, which places Naharon Eva as the first and oldest fossil human found in the Yucatan peninsula and in the rest of America”.
In the depth of the cave was in 1998 that, as part of a project of the INAH, began the first underwater forays for archaeological research in the caves and cenotes (cavities on the surface that give access to the caves) on the Peninsula of Yucatan, as explained by the river.
“In the case of the Eva of Naharon took us more than one year of explorations following rumours of the existence of skeletal remains unidentified within the cenote Naharon, from which derives the name from eve of Naharon and is access to the Orange Grove cave system located at the s ur of Tulum, in the State of Quintana Roo”.
INAH the RIOLos OCTAVIO Eva skeletal remains were found in Naharon cenote, from which derives the name from Eva Naharon.INAH OCTAVIO of the Rio RIOOctavio (pictured), together with his colleague Eugenio Acevez, placed the remains of Eva to 367 meters from the entrance of a cave and 22 “, 4 meters deep.” The work was Marathon, all references we wore to recondite places inside the cave without being able to locate the site in mention. We had to spend many hours diving ruling out places and routes within the cave system”.
He was finally in the year 2000, that of the River, along with his colleague Eugenio Acevez, remainders 367 metres from the entrance of the cave and 22.4 meters deep. Two years later the skeleton was collected for analysis “anthropological analyses carried out by Dr. Alejandro Terrazas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), noted that the skeleton found contained about 80% of the structure original of a woman who was 1.41 meters in height, and had between 20 and 25 years of age at the time of his death”.
“The remains of Naharon found in a remote area inside the cave, a stately and stunningly dark cave”.
“The road forks in many other tunnels, which you veins of the Earth. Everything is very unclear, shadows that cause the torches come and go, there are rocks collapsed on all sides”.
Water came Eva is “perhaps a question that we can never answer,” said del Rio.
One possibility is that the young traveled the 360 metres toward the interior of the cave to search for water.
“The only access to water sources was through the caves, the Yucatán peninsula is composed of karst, which is a highly porous calcareous component that allows filtration of rainwater into the ground to the level of the sea by staying and” “agua dulce (less heavy) above the water dissociates from the sea”.
INAH CICERO MORAESEva was 1.41 meters of height and had between 20 and 25 years of age at the time of his death. The caves were dry because in the sea level had dropped 30 meters in the ice age, explained the Rio.
It was only at the end of the ice age the sea reached its current level due to the melting of water.
“In the depth of the cave, travel should have been very stressful, not only by fears of loneliness in addition to a place of hostile nature, dark, desolate and in total darkness, even wet and predominantly cold, but also by the effects that the crossing could have been caused on the mind and body. Tiredness and lack of fresh air cause suffocation also and make it difficult to think clearly.”
Funeral ritual a second possibility is that Eva will reach the depth of the cave to protect themselves from predators “who had to be careful to not be eaten”.
The mega-fauna characteristic of the time until their extinction at the start of the Holocene included Tigers Saber-toothed, pumas and bears huge among other large predators. Also, there were giant sloths, glyptodonts or giant armadillos, localidad and other animals that they hunted as a source of livelihood.
EUGENIO ACEVES INAHTres different laboratories studied the bones of Eva using mass spectrometry and analysis of isotopes of carbon 14.Y techniques a third possibility is that Eva was carried to the cave after his death.
“Perhaps the most successful theory is the possibility that were of a funeral, deposit a where people close took her in tow to a remote and impenetrable place that be could disturb and achieve peace and eternal rest” said of the river.
“So we might think that you it’s one of the first manifestations of ritual post-mortem on the continent.”
Free software Cicero Moraes explained to the BBC how he managed to recreate the face of Eva.
“The facial reconstruction began with the 3D scanning of the skull. The Mexican team had already taken pictures of the structure in a circle of 10 to 10 degrees”.
CICERO MORAESCicero Moraes and his team have used free software to reconstruct the faces of almost 60 historical characters. CICERO MORAESLa santa Rosa Lima Peruvian is another example of the work of Moraes.” When I got the pictures I used a computational algorithm that turns them into a 3D object corresponding to the skull and jaw. But the skull was not full so I had to use one virtual to complement it.”
Once the skull was full, Moraes made a reconstruction based on two approaches.
“One is the anatomic, where I modeled the major muscles of the face. And the other is the statistician, where we took data from hundreds of individuals with the same ancestral characteristics to know what thickness had skin in certain parts of the face.”
Moraes used OrtogOnBlender software, developed by his team and that it works with the program Blender 3D and makes Photogrammetry from other software, the OpenMVG+OpenMVS.
“All software are free, free, and work on the three most popular operating systems on the market.”
The remains of eve of Naharon Asian origin and other skulls found in the same region have anatomical characteristics that coincide with the inhabitants of South Asia and Indonesia.
Digital craniofacial reconstruction drawn up by Moraes “seems to confirm this. The work done is congruent with the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of South Asia, i.e. agrees with anthropological studies and carried out DNA on human fossils found in this region, all pointing to an Asian ancestor” He said of the river.
EUGENIO ACEVES INAHDel Río in Naharon cenote. The caves were dry when Eva lived, since the sea level had dropped during the age of the Hielo.El INAH hopes to create a virtual museum with 3D models of their findings, which will lead to users around the world archaeological treasures in the future as the face of Eva.
When you recreate the factions of the young woman, Moraes became “joy and honor, because this work is a way of humanizing a guy and make that your history is remembered by those who today are here”.
For Osvaldo de el Río, the forensic reconstruction of a woman who lived to 13,600 years ago “is a unique and exciting event.”
“The wonder of new technologies brings us further to our last”.
“We can now see from front to the humans who have gone before us”.
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Original source in Spanish