Thaindian News

London, Oct 21 (IANS) A forensic science student has successfully reconstructed the face of a Stone Age boy who lived outside Stavanger in Norway around 7,500 years ago.

Jenny Barber, a student at the University of Dundee, Scotland, is studying forensic art, an unusual discipline that relies on anatomy and identification to recreate the appearance of an actual person.

This modelling method is primarily employed to assist police investigations, and is little known or used in Norway. But Barber has achieved the most extensive reconstruction of a Stone Age skeleton in the country’s forensic history.

“It is hoped that this reconstruction is a good likeness and that, if someone who knew him in life had been presented with this restoration, they would hopefully have recognised the face,” says Barber, according to a Dundee statement.

Discovered in 1907, the Viste Boy, whose face Barber so painstakingly reconstructed, represents the most complete Norwegian Stone Age skeleton and the third oldest human remains ever found in Norway.

His dark-coloured skull and bones are currently on display in a glass case at the Archaeological Museum on the University of Stavanger (UiS).

Analyses show the Viste Boy was approximately 15 when he died. He stood a bit less than 1.25 metres tall and probably lived in a group of 10-15 people.

From their studies of rubbish in and around Vistehola, the archaeologists determined that this clan ate fish - mostly cod - as well as oysters, mussels, cormorants, elk and wild pig. They also thought that the teenager might have been sickly, which would explain his early death.