Scientists reconstruct face of 9,000-year-old teenage girl

Scientists have successfully recreated the face of a teenage girl who reportedly died over 9,000 years ago.

The face of Dawn, named Avgi in Greek, was reconstructed with the help of advanced 3D scanning and modeling technology. The girl who died some time near 7,000 BC was found in a cave back in 1993. Through CT scans of the skull, a precise clone was made via a 3D printer.

The face created was of a faint masculine female with an angry look on her face. An archeologist and sculptor, Oscar Nilsson, told National Geographic that people at that time usually looked less feminine. “Having reconstructed a lot of Stone Age women and men, I think some facial features seem to have disappeared or ‘smoothed out’ with time. In general, we look less masculine, both men and women, today.”

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Analysis of her teeth and bone showed that the girl must have aged between 15-18 years old at the time of her demise. Dawn has a protruding jaw that the historians believe is due to munching on animal skin in order to turn it into soft leather, a common practice at that time. When questioned about why the girl looked angry, orthodontics professor Manolis Papagrikorakis joked, “It’s not possible for her not to be angry during such an era.”

As far as the cause of her death is concerned, Daily Mail reported that few researchers suggest that she was probably feeble and suffered from scurvy. Also, some evidence hinted that she had hip and joint problems causing her difficulty in moving, contributing to her death.

Discovered in the Thessaly’s Theopetra cave, today Dawn is displayed in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.