"Neanderthals were quite modern."

May 7, 2018 8:28 PM

Meet the ancestors… the two brothers creating lifelike figures of early humans. "Dutch twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis are showing their uncanny models in museums all over Europe. Adrie discusses how their creations are realised and the extreme reactions they can provoke."

Adrie and Alfons Kennis also have a website.

posted by JamesBay (28 comments total)

I just look in a mirror.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:35 PM on May 7, 2018 [35 favorites]

Some of the reactions may come from the fact that some of them are smiling. So many museum figures look blank or even grim, like, damn, I hate this fucking job and I can't wait until my next break.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:47 PM on May 7, 2018 [21 favorites]

Yeah, this is part of what I love about their "Cheddar Man" reconstruction. He looks so incredibly animated, and like someone who could live down the street from me. He's not some strange cave-person, he's your neighbor who comes over when you need a hand dressing an elk, and then tells bad jokes while you drink beer.

He should also put to rest, once and for all, any arguments about who does or doesn't "look British."


I mean, he won't. But he should.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:32 PM on May 7, 2018 [18 favorites]

These faces are beautiful and compelling - really brings these people to life.
posted by darkstar at 9:33 PM on May 7, 2018 [3 favorites]

These are great. I'm used to reconstructions or illustrations looking like they just got caught taking a dump. Early European man from Peştera cu Oase, Romania is spectacular. He looks like he has some entertaining stories to tell.
posted by juiceCake at 9:55 PM on May 7, 2018 [4 favorites]

Thank you for this link! I've been staring at those reconstructions on the Kennis brothers page for an hour. The realism is incredible. It's the closest thing to seeing Lucy and Turkana boy and the others in the flesh. I'm really beside myself.
posted by Transl3y at 10:54 PM on May 7, 2018 [6 favorites]

My office is two floors above the NHM models, sometimes I nip down to the gallery and just watch people encountering them. It's pretty amazing how much double-taking goes on, they are incredibly charismatic. Especially as you get to them after lots of skulls and bones and info about early human doings that's really intriguing and informative but essentially abstracted. Then you come up close to these wonderful faces and lightbulbs go off - you can see people mentally constructing ancestral communities around them.
posted by freya_lamb at 1:49 AM on May 8, 2018 [18 favorites]

I also find them captivating. Reconstructions are often sterile, but these look like people.

(And now I'm jealous of freya_lamb's job.)
posted by Harald74 at 1:54 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

I'm happy to (finally) see Neanderthals shown with reddish hair, and Homo Sapiens with dark skin - as the DNA evidence suggests they respectively had. Too often, racial stereotypes (even outright racism) lead us to picture Neanderthals as darker, Homo Sapiens as blond and pale. But we had just arrived from Africa, only a few thousand years before - as these models (and the DNA evidence) reflect.

I also love the Romanian model with 9% Neanderthal DNA - he looks like he has a sense of humour.
posted by jb at 4:26 AM on May 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

The smiles, to be sure, make a difference, but also - the scars, the wrinkles, the blemishes, the sometimes frizzy hair all play such a vital part in making a figure into a person. Even if the more ubiquitous models are not great beauties, their unblemished surfaces and blank expressions don't even propel them to the uncanny valley in terms of apparent personhood.

These are great; may a million lifelike models blooms.
posted by palindromic at 4:31 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

I like these models. I like the very expressive faces. It’s funny, back when Ötzi was found, many people didn’t like the reconstructions because he looked homeless. I don’t know what anyone expected. This was a man who lived outdoors much of his life. Not much to ease life then. One walked everywhere and work was inevitable.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 4:53 AM on May 8, 2018 [10 favorites]

There's a whole fascinating host of issues in giving these reconstructions anything more than neutral characteristics and expressions. Apart from the emotional content they add to their models, there's also situational context (the wind in their hair/beard), and narrative implications (they all seem intent on, or in the middle of, doing something specific). Some of the same tension/issues are what have made Von Hagens' Bodyworld reconstructions such a point of discussion.

Mainly, it's a choice that surfaces the implications of adhering to a presumed "objectivity" that is considered proper to scientific work - a concept that has obviously seen great variability throughout the history of science (see for example a couple of centuries of anatomical and pathological wax figures).

To imbue an individual so strongly with soul/character/context, to transform what in a museum context would count as a type example of a species, instead into an individuum, works subtly against the tacit othering that is traditionally implicit in the exhibition (and often also the teaching) of science, by appealing to our empathy while imagining other eras/peoples.

(It's a tension I became aware of at an exhibition of entomogical drawings (so another type of scientific illustration/modelling altogether) by different illustrators, through the ages. The stylistic choices/biases between representations of individuals of the same exact species of beetle made it abundantly clear that any pretence of "objectivity" was a hopeless masquerade: these were individual creatures, captured by individuals and reproduced according to their individual ideas/preconceptions.)

What might just seem a question of aesthetics is actually a significant challenge to the ethics of science - whence comments such as TheWhiteSkull, jb and Katjusa's above. So kudos to the curators who are stepping up to the plate by commissioning the Kennis twins to make their models - may it bring more empathy to science&history.
posted by progosk at 6:06 AM on May 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

They look more human than Elon Musk at the Met Gala. Also I love how the Neanderthal woman has very chic Mom hair and how the Early European guy looks like he's having a blast at Burning Man.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:32 AM on May 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

Maybe someone can apply these techniques to Richard Neave's egregious reconstruction of Jesus.
posted by No Robots at 6:46 AM on May 8, 2018

I hope some of these come to America, especially to the Museum of Natural History in NY. They are so alive. As depicted, if I were an ancient human woman I would chose Neanderthal over Homo Sapiens. According to 23&Me most Europeans have some percentage of Neanderthal DNA. Do not Know if that is true, but it is a good thought. I love Neanderthal grandma and child, some things do not change.
posted by mermayd at 6:52 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

By studying people from more isolated or primitive societies, the brothers believe they can see through a window into the past.

Oh really now.
posted by inconstant at 7:05 AM on May 8, 2018 [5 favorites]

I love these. Lucy is sooo sassy and I want to babysit the La Quina child even though I know he'd be a handful.
posted by LarsC at 7:36 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Most Western white-skinned people have around 5% Neanderthal DNA. In fact, I believe the white skin pigmentation is a Neanderthal thing, as is red hair.

This is so different from what I learned at school in the 90's when academics mostly scoffed at the idea that there was inter-breeding.

There are some aspects of the inter-breeding I wish I understood better. The Neanderthal were a different species. Usually, if you interbreed different species there's a very low chance of the offspring being fertile. Maybe 1 in a 1000, like in Mules? This would suggest the level of inter-breeding between Humans and Neanderthal must have been massive. 5% is not a small amount of DNA.

Again, I'm not an expert on this, and would love if someone who knows more would chime in. Anyway, these recreations are great. I would love to see them in suits smoking cigarettes or something, just lounging around.
posted by xammerboy at 8:04 AM on May 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

This video has some shots of the models as they're being constructed, if you're curious about process.
posted by Nelson at 8:40 AM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

These are great.

I wonder if Neanderthals ever had blue eyes? There seems to be some evidence, from their DNA - that they were just as genetically polymorphic as modern humans: so not necessarily all having the same skin or hair colour. Blue eyed humans apparently share a single common ancestor from just 6-10,000 years ago. Neanderthals had a very much longer history for polymorphism to appear.
posted by rongorongo at 10:28 AM on May 8, 2018

John Gurche did the reconstructions for the Smithsonian.
posted by gudrun at 10:52 AM on May 8, 2018

These are beautiful. According to 23andme I have 296 neanderthal varients (more than 79% of all 23andme folks) but my ancestry is 4% neanderthal (they have folks who have up to 7%). I am not sure what any of that means.
posted by agatha_magatha at 12:57 PM on May 8, 2018

Maybe 1 in a 1000, like in Mules?

Good lord that means that donkeys and horses must be having sex *like mad*. It must be nearly continuous in order to produce offspring.

And now I cannot get the image of multiple donkey/horse couplings out of my head.
posted by JamesBay at 8:52 PM on May 8, 2018

I love these models. Science could well do with the discomfort of realizing that many of the creatures it studies (human and not human both)have emotions and feelings and desires and all the rest of it. Im just delighted by the work the Kennis brothers have done. Thanks for sharing!
posted by WalkerWestridge at 8:58 PM on May 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

I wonder if the older littler ones like Lucy would be like a little cat person.
posted by bleep at 9:23 PM on May 8, 2018

I can´t believe how realistic these sculptures look.
posted by Masiekoe at 1:25 AM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

The sculpture of the really early ancestors are my favorites. They do a fantastic job of making the faces relatable. I wonder about human head hair some times - how early we started cutting it. On someone like Turkana boy, you’d expect to see about 8 years of non-stop hair growth, no?
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:07 AM on May 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

They purposely modeled the hair after different current traditions - one of the figures has plucked hair from the front (and sides?). Given that early hominids had stone knives, maybe they did cut their hair - or pluck parts bald, maybe as a marker of status or something.
posted by jb at 6:39 AM on May 10, 2018