How high is the similarity in facial restoration? High technology lifts the veil on the ancients

With the help of Zhao Chengwen, a well-known criminal profiling expert, Cao Cao, who used to be "unremarkable" and whose appearance was rarely recorded in "Three Kingdoms", finally handed over to the world a qualified "standard photo" after more than 1800 years: Square The face and eyes are slender, the eyebrows are thick and scattered, the bridge of the nose is protruding, and the forehead is tilted. Although the reconstruction of the appearance is only 80% similar, the descendants of the Cao family expressed high recognition of this "standard photo" of their ancestors. After all, it was derived from the appearance of descendants.

Strictly speaking, the skull is the most basic material for restoring ancient faces. The so-called "seeing people through the bones", seeing death is like seeing life. Only through the skull can people understand the height of the nose bridge, the size of the eyes, the height of the eyebrows and other facial features. As for Cao Cao, whose skull was completely damaged, Zhao Chengwen could only make an educated guess about his appearance based on photos and related information of his descendants, combined with geneticists' analysis of the DNA of Cao Cao's nine descendants. However, Zhao Chengwen said that if there was a skull, the similarity in Cao Cao's appearance would be 90%-95%.

The cranial facial reconstruction technology originated in the 19th century and was first carried out by German scholars in order to confirm the remains of the German musician Bach. In 1894, the city of Leipzig had to move Bach's cemetery due to the expansion of St. John's Church. Although everyone knows that Bach is buried here, no one knows the specific location where Bach is buried. They only have a vague impression: Bach's cemetery is located in plot 1, only six steps away from the south door of the church, and his coffin is Made of oak.

On October 09, 1894, under the supervision of Dr. Tranzel, the rector of St. John's Church, and anatomist Wilhelm Heath, the excavation work officially began. Three days later, workers dug up an oak coffin. Hiss verified that the bones were those of a young woman. Under her coffin, there was an oak coffin in which an elderly man was buried. It was believed that this was most likely Bach's coffin. After testing by Heath and Vogel, the length of the entire body was 166.8cm. The brain volume of the cranial cavity is 1479.5cc, which is very close to the average level of the Germans - 1478cc.

Heath wanted to reshape the skin and hair on this skull to see if it could be close to the portrait of Bach during his lifetime, so he studied the thickness of facial soft tissue of 24 male corpses and 4 female corpses, and compiled the data Together with the old man's skull, it was given to the sculptor Carl Severnet. Without telling in advance who the skull might belong to, Heath asked Severnet to sculpt the skull based on the thickness of these soft tissues. As a result, the bust that Severnet carved was very similar to the portrait of Bach during his lifetime, so the skeleton was Bach provides strong evidence.

On March 8, 1895, a committee composed of Heath, Tranzel and others submitted a report to the Leipzig city government, proposing that the male skeleton excavated last year could be confirmed to a large extent as that of Leipzig. Bach, and soon after, Hiss formally published the findings in the form of a paper. This is the first time in the world that someone has used the method of skull reconstruction to recreate the appearance of the deceased. Although Hiss's original intention was to confirm the identity of Bach's remains, the attempt to restore the celebrity with the skull not only detonated the public opinion at the time, And it has attracted the attention of many archaeologists and anthropologists. In 1898, German scholars Kalman and Buki selected 18 measuring points on the faces of 45 male corpses and 8 female corpses. After detailed research, they listed the thickness parameters of soft tissue at various points on the faces of men and women. , which laid the foundation for scholars from various countries to carry out facial restoration work.

Since then, scholars from different countries have studied the skull facial reconstruction of different races. Although German scholars started early, the Soviet scientist Gerasimov who made remarkable achievements was undoubtedly the Soviet scientist. Based on his research on the restoration of skulls and facial features of his country's multi-ethnic groups, he published a monograph "The Principle of Restoring Facial Faces from Skulls", which summarized and proposed a more comprehensive and systematic theory.

After careful study of a large number of human bodies, Gerasimov found that women's jaws are smaller and thinner than men's, and proposed a method of inferring age based on the skull: if the teeth are worn, the skull is completely integrated and hardened, it must be adults. He not only restored the appearance of a large number of ancient humans and historical figures (such as Admiral Ushakov, Timur, etc.) for various Soviet museums, but he was also the first to apply this work to criminal technology. In 1950, ??Gerasimov received the Stalin Prize for his outstanding achievements.

The process of skull facial restoration includes two parts: the restoration of the proper parts of the face and the restoration of the eyes, nose, mouth, ears and other facial features. In traditional archaeological restoration, experts will first turn the skull into a plaster model. According to the physical indicators of different genders and ages, paste strips of clay with corresponding soft tissue thickness at different locations, and then use sculpture clay to cover the entire skull according to the thickness of the soft tissue. , to restore the inherent soft tissue part of the face. Next, the corresponding facial features were sculpted based on specific observations of the skull. Finally, surface modification and processing work is carried out to make the entire model look more similar.

Compared with the three-dimensional facial reconstruction work on the computer, this tradition of making clay figures has higher requirements on the staff and the workload is also heavy. Using clay to reshape the skull’s face will often result in a A different face. But through the computer, if it is the same skull and data, the same face will be obtained.

Because, before using computers to perform three-dimensional face restoration work, the computer itself has created a universal platform for three-dimensional facial facial part models. It will produce numerous eyes, noses, mouths, etc. with different characteristics according to different races, ages and genders. The three-dimensional model of the ear can be used to directly call the three-dimensional model of eyes, nose, mouth, and ears that are similar to the characteristics of the restored individual each time when restoring different individuals. This can reduce unnecessary repeated modeling and greatly improve the restoration efficiency.

The reconstruction of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun that we see today is a three-dimensional image created by researchers based on multiple high-resolution X-rays provided by a stereoscopic tomography machine. Before officially scanning Tutankhamun, the tomography machine needs to be tested on other Egyptian mummies to build a complete database of ancient Egyptian diseases. As Tutankhamun's body passed through the scanning machine, researchers could see through the sarcophagus, skin, bones and even the inside of the bones, converting Tutankhamun's tomography data into the young pharaoh's facial features.

Anthropologists and anatomists have accumulated a large amount of data on the thickness of various facial tissues of people of different races, genders, and looks in practice, and will compile it into a standard form and input it into the computer. Therefore, when people use computers to perform face restoration, they only need to enter the basic information of the skull and click a few times to get a face restoration map.

Zhao Chengwen, known as the "Chinese Super Detective" and the "Founder of Chinese Criminal Physiology", has an inexplicable fate with the restoration of ancient corpses. His first association with ancient corpses began in 2002. At that time, Zhao Chengwen was invited to give lectures in Jiangxi. When he happened to pass by the Jiangxi Provincial Museum, he was shown in the "Real Face of the Princess of the Ming Dynasty - Exhibition of Rare Treasures from the Tombs of the Ming Dynasty Kings in Jiangxi" The body of Princess Ming was deeply attracted. Stopping in front of Princess Ming's intact skull, Zhao Chengwen had an idea and decided to use the "Police Star CCK-III Portrait Simulation Combination System" to restore Princess Ming's true appearance. Before the official restoration, Zhao Chengwen read a large amount of historical and folklore materials of the Ming Dynasty, conducted detailed research on the lives and costumes of the Ming Dynasty people, and took photos of the remains of Princess Ming from different angles. More than ten days later, my country's first perfectly restored photo of an ancient person was released. After analysis by physiognomy experts, the similarity of this picture of Princess Ming's wife reached more than 95%. Since then, Zhao Chengwen's work of restoring the appearance of ancient people has been unstoppable. Madam Xin Zhui, Loulan Beauty, Wu Chengen, Concubine Rong of the Qing Dynasty, King Zouyao of Dongou, and the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun... have all become the objects of his restoration. In March 2002, the Hunan Provincial Museum asked Zhao Chengwen to restore the appearance of the famous Madam Xin Zhui, a female corpse found in Mawangdui, Changsha more than 2,200 years ago. He first reconstructed Xin Zhui’s face at the age of 30 based on the Effectiveness." Zhao Chengwen explained.

In the process of restoring Xin Zhui's face, Zhao Chengwen adopted a unique approach and adopted the "three courts and five eyes" theory in painting, using nine straight lines, 4 horizontally and 5 vertically, to determine the position and size of the facial features. He first scanned the X-ray of Xin Zhui's skull into the computer, and then drew the medial eye line, lateral eye line, nose alar line, nose bottom line, hairline, eyebrow arch line, cleft line, mandibular line, and center on it. lines and other main characteristic lines. In Zhao Chengwen's view, the "three courts" determine the length of the face, and the "five eyes" determine the width. The hairline is a mark between a person's forehead and hair. The brow line determines the position of the eyebrows. The base line of the nose refers to the position of the lower part of the nose. The lower forehead line indicates the position of the bottom line of the head. Based on these nine lines, the position, length, width, and size of the facial features can be basically determined, and the basic facial features are determined.

Then, Zhao Chengwen determined Xin Zhui’s basic facial features based on relevant literature, corpse photos, anthropology, anatomical structure theory and years of accumulated experience: almond-shaped eyes, double eyelids, small pointed nose, thin lips, Foxtail eyebrows and fat lop ears. In the end, he only needed to find facial features matching the skull from the system component library and assemble them. After a series of technical processing, he traveled through a thousand-year time and space tunnel, and Xin Zhui, who was 18 years old, 30 years old, and 50 years old, came back. .

However, "there must be certain errors in the portraits of ancient people more than 2,000 years ago, but according to statistical data, the errors should be controlled within 10%," Zhao Chengwen said in an interview. As far as Mrs. Xin Zhui is concerned, the 10% error is mainly concentrated in three aspects: First, the X-ray film has a flaw in the ointment. In the process of restoring the appearance of ancient people, Zhao Chengwen often uses the skull as the basis, and this time There are only X-rays of the skull, which will inevitably bring a certain degree of regret; secondly, the demeanor and expression of the portrait will have a certain personal color of Zhao Chengwen; thirdly, Zhao Chengwen made 50 When looking at the faces of 18 years old, we mainly rely on statistical reasoning, supplemented by a certain degree of guessing.

Although modern technology is amazing and can help the skull to restore the appearance of ancient people, due to our lack of certain knowledge reserves about the facial structure of ancient people, it is impossible to restore the appearance of ancient people with 100% accuracy. Therefore, the restored image can only be approximate and should be regarded as Used in museum display materials.

As for those details that cannot be restored, the individual expressions and movements can only be left to future generations to slowly savor~