At first I wanted to limit myself to a standard biography, but then I came across an essay by an equally famous Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh who knew Gerasimov well. Moreover, his wife Vera Mikhailovna was connected with Gerasimov by common professional interests and cooperation.
The essay is very lively, so I decided to quote it with a slight reduction.
“Gerasimov was born in 1907 in Leningrad, his father, a doctor, in 1908 left with all the household members for Irkutsk to a resettlement point - in those years many migrants went to Siberia, he treated everyone in the district, was a great lover of nature, in his library next to the medical literature were books about the world of past geological epochs and the writings of Darwin. It is not surprising that Mikhail Mikhailovich also became interested in “antiquities” and devoted himself to scientific activity in this area. He was nine years old when he joined the first excavations - a parking lot was found near Irkutsk ancient man. His formation as a scientist is typical for talented people of the 20s and 30s, he “reached everything himself”, worked very hard and eventually became a scientist recognized not only in the USSR, but all over the world. In 1931-1932 he studied in Leningrad at the State Academy of Material Culture, in 1937 he was in charge of the restoration workshop of the Hermitage. And he started as an archaeologist in the Irkutsk Museum of Local Lore. Well, of course, he participated in excavations, explored ancient burials. It was then, apparently, that the idea of reconstructing the appearance from the skull was born, because Mikhail Mikhailovich knew well that even in the last century Georges Cuvier had shown how much the bones of extinct animals could tell an observant scientist. Like his predecessors in this area, Gerasimov began with the accumulation of factual material, he began not with a person, but with animals - diplodocus and pterodactyl, with saber-toothed tiger, mastodon, mammoth. Then - the head of a chimpanzee, his first work on monkeys, it is exhibited at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg. He proved that there is a certain correlation between the bony part of the skull and soft tissues. Based on this, it was possible to recreate muscle tissue from the skull; so Volcker once created a profile of Raphael on his skull, and the question of the authenticity of the burial place of the great artist of the era was resolved High Renaissance. There are no two identical skulls in the world, just as there are no two identical faces. One of Gerasimov's first tests was carried out in Leningrad, at the Miklukho-Maclay Museum of Ethnography: he was given a skull, whose, they did not say, and he created a portrait using his own method.
Later it turned out that there is, it turns out, a lifetime photograph of this man - a Papuan, whom Miklukho-Maclay once took to Russia; the Papuan fell ill and died in St. Petersburg, but his photographic image has been preserved. By giving Gerasimov the skull of a Papuan, the skeptics wanted to show the imperfection of his methodology. They were sure that they would receive a sculpture of a European, but they received a Papuan. So one of the tests of Gerasimov's art was made. For another control experiment in 1940, Gerasimov received a skull found in one of the crypts of the Moscow cemetery. The man lived about a hundred years ago and was a relative of the famous Russian writer - Gerasimov was told about this, but nothing else! He set to work, it turned out to be very painstaking, but Gerasimov managed to determine that the skull belonged to a relatively young woman. Therefore, restoring her face, he made her a hairstyle, which was worn at that time. After the work was completed, Mikhail Mikhailovich was told that they had restored the head of Maria Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky's mother, and her lifetime portrait, the only one painted when she was twenty years old, was preserved. She died later, at thirty-seven, but the resemblance between the reconstruction and the portrait was striking - one face!.. Criminologists also quickly learned about the work of M.M. Gerasimov, he provided them with constant and very significant assistance. He told us about several cases. A boy disappeared in Leningrad, they couldn’t find him for a very long time, in the end a skeleton was discovered, the skull was given to Gerasimov, he made a reconstruction, and then they began to look for who owns the image. When the boy's parents were given a pack of photographs, they immediately selected exactly those that were taken from the painted and dressed reconstruction of Gerasimov. Before the war in Stalingrad, a certain husband said that his pregnant wife had disappeared. A year later, the teacher with the children went to the forest to collect a herbarium and came across the remains of a skeleton and a skull. The new prosecutor of the city, a woman, sorting through cases, found a case of disappearance, it seemed to her that the found skull could belong to the missing, she put it in a parcel and sent it to Mikhail Mikhailovich. He made a reconstruction, a hairstyle that the missing woman wore, and when the sculpture was shown to her husband, he immediately confessed to the murder ...
I repeat that Gerasimov began as an archaeologist, he took up anthropology and sculpture later, before that he carried out many excavations in Siberia. His Siberian excavations of ancient Paleolithic settlements are among the best in the collections of our country. He switched to skull reconstruction later. He himself wrote about this: “The idea of the possibility of restoring the appearance of an ancient man arose in me a very long time ago. The implementation required many years of preparation, as I had to independently develop a method for reconstructing the face from the skull. In parallel with my archaeological work, I studied anthropological material, dissected heads, measuring the thickness of the muscular cover ... A lot of time passed before I dared to offer my work to anthropologists for judgment. God does not give a person only one talent, he either immediately gives a lot, or does not give anything. So it is with Gerasimov. Of course, he was very talented not only as a scientist, but also as an artist and sculptor. He was always interested in the restoration of ancient types - Sinanthropus, Neanderthal, Paleolithic and Neolithic people. And he liked to say when he made a sculpture without a mustache and without a beard, without decorations corresponding to the era, without conjecture - "That's what I'm responsible for." In 1938, in Uzbekistan, in the Tashik-Tash cave, A.P. Okladnikov, later an academician, found an ancient burial of the Stone Age culture. A whole skeleton of a Neanderthal boy was preserved there. Gerasimov restored it to its full height, and, naturally, this received a wide response. Many believed, many did not believe, passions boiled around his work.
Several of his largest works have not only archaeological, but also historical and cultural significance. For example, Yaroslav the Wise, whose tomb was opened in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. No one then was sure whether Yaroslav was or not Yaroslav. In the annals, he was called the "lame-footed prince", and the skeleton had one leg shorter than the other. That is, everything was for the fact that this is the skeleton of Yaroslav. And Gerasimov restored his appearance! There were, of course, hesitation, until in 1941 a fresco depicting Prince Yaroslav was discovered in St. Sophia Cathedral under a layer of late plaster, and although frescoes are always more generalized than a portrait miniature, the resemblance to the restored appearance was undeniable.
Yaroslav the Wise
The recovery process is incredibly painstaking.
Well, at least one detail: eye sockets and a pear-shaped hole in place of the nose. And who knows what kind of nose it was? After all, the nasal bones end high, then comes the cartilage. It would seem that any nose can be imagined: both upturned and hooked - whatever. Through a huge number of experiments, Gerasimov established that if a tangent line is drawn through the last third of the nasal bones, and a straight line is also drawn from the nasal spike, as if continuing it, then the intersection point will mark the tip of the nose in all hundred percent. And the shape of the nose, its width depends on the width of the pear-shaped opening ... The most difficult thing, Gerasimov admitted, for him is the ear. The ear, as he said, he did not fully master.
The excavations of the burial place of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the son of Yuri Dolgoruky, were very interesting. As you know, he refused to live with his father in Kyiv and went to reign in Vladimir, where he built a magnificent palace and cathedral in Bogolyubovo. The boyars and princes, forced to obey him, secretly hated him. The chronicle says: "I hate Prince Andrei ... and there was a fierce scolding in the Rostov and Suzdal lands." In 1175, Prince Andrei was killed in his own palace. There was nothing to argue about the fact that Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky was in the burial: there was a princely ax with the letter “A” nearby. But in the process of restoring the appearance, a certain type arose, for which, as Gerasimov said, he is responsible - the type is clearly Mongoloid. A rather extensive circle of Gerasimov's ill-wishers kept repeating: well, what kind of son is Yuri Dolgoruky, how can a Russian person have such a Mongoloid face? In the end, they found in the documents: it turns out that Yuri Dolgoruky was married to the daughter of the Polovtsian Khan by his second marriage, Andrei from his mother and inherited these character traits. Moreover, the setting of his head was very curious. The chronicles say that Prince Andrei was so arrogant that when the ambassadors of foreign powers appeared, he did not bow to them. Mikhail Mikhailovich took up this, and it turned out that the prince was suffering from some kind of serious illness, his cervical vertebrae had fused, and he could not tilt his head.
Andrey Bogolyubsky
Not only the history of Russia, but also the history of Central Asia interested him.
In this regard, it is impossible not to tell about the restoration of portraits of the Timurids by him: Timur himself, his sons and grandson. Many legends are associated with Timur Guragan, one of them tells about his injury, and he had a great many of them. Once Timur with his cavalry was returning from a campaign, and at sunset they entered a semi-dark gorge. Towards them - some squad. According to the customs of that time, a meeting with an unknown detachment actually always led to a fight. It was getting dark, and over Timur's head, as the legend says, the leader of the oncoming cavalry raised his saber, shouting his battle tribal cry. By this call, Timur recognized his father and intercepted his saber on the fly ... When Gerasimov opened the tomb, it turned out that a callus passed through the entire left palm of Timur, along its back, which means that the hand was still cut. Here's a legend for you!
Tamerlane
In the Gur-Emir mausoleum, the graves of Timur's sons - Shahrukh and Miranshah, as well as Ulugbek, the grandson of Timur, a famous scientist of his time, astronomer, poet and healer, were opened. Ulugbek was so great as an astronomer that even in medieval Europe considered, along with Ptolemy and a couple of other scientists, the pillar of astronomy, his astronomical tables were striking in their accuracy, and they were used even centuries after his death. Ulugbek was not only a scientist, but also a progressive ruler, which could not please the court circles. He was forced to abdicate and make a penitential journey to Muslim shrines. Immediately after leaving the capital, assassins sent by the new ruler, Khan Abbas, overtook him and cut off his head. The opening of the grave showed that Ulugbek's head had indeed been cut off. This fact, like the dissected palm of Timur, allowed Gerasimov to say: “Rarely do archaeologists come across such documentary confirmation, illustrating chronicle evidence and folk tales, as in this case.”
Ulugbek
The Ministry of the Navy announced a competition for the creation of a sculptural portrait of Ushakov for the anniversary of Ushakov, and Mikhail Mikhailovich offered to open the grave of the admiral for this purpose. The work turned out to be very difficult, the ground signs of the burial were not preserved, I had to raise all the documents that there was a chapel there, and near the chapel, there, Ushakov was buried. And the chapel, I must say, also did not survive. But then, of course, Gerasimov, as an archaeologist, found the remains of the chapel, found the grave, opened it. There was no doubt that Ushakov's skeleton was there - his admiral's stripes were preserved. And now Gerasimov makes a portrait. And passions boiled up again. There is a lifetime portrait of Ushakov, it depicts a nobleman with a nobly elongated face. When Mikhail Mikhailovich created his reconstruction, Ushakov turned out to have a completely different chin, heavy, almost square, strong-willed. Of course, certain canons were observed in the portraits of dignitaries of that time, the nobleman was supposed to be a refined courtier, but you can’t argue with the fact, as they say. And when the film “Admiral Ushakov” was filmed, the actor was already made up to look like Gerasimov.
Ushakov
For many years, Mikhail Mikhailovich wanted to make a portrait of Ivan the Terrible - there are no reliable images of the Terrible, only the sculpture of Antokolsky (naturally, not a portrait) and some kind of old parsuna, made in the traditional icon-painting style. Gerasimov bothered a lot about Grozny during Stalin's lifetime, and he said that it was, of course, very tempting, instructing Voroshilov to meet with Gerasimov, and Voroshilov conveyed Stalin's words that in principle it would be good, but now is not the time - there is a war going on. Already after the death of Stalin, it was decided to allow Gerasimov to make such a portrait, but for a reason: the Palace of Congresses was being built, and the water regime of the Kremlin hill was violated. The Archangel Cathedral, the tomb of the Russian tsars, began to deform because it stood on piles, and the piles began to die. Work began on strengthening the Archangel Cathedral, and it was then that it was allowed to open the tomb of Ivan the Terrible at the same time. Making a portrait of the king, Gerasimov discovered that he, apparently, was in last years life was seriously ill with dropsy. The characteristic puffiness is noticeable on the sculpture.
Ivan groznyj
During the war, not being able to open the tomb of Ivan the Terrible, Gerasimov received permission to open the tomb of Boris Godunov and his family, since it was not in the Kremlin, but in Zagorsk. The tomb of the Godunovs is located right in front of the Assumption Cathedral and was devastated upon opening: the preservation is amazing, perfect reconstructions could have been created, even the silk fabrics with which the coffin of Maria Feodorovna was covered survived, the shirt of Tsarevich Fyodor, made of strips of leather, survived, the shoes of Princess Xenia were preserved, but... the skulls were thrown away. And Xenia was considered at that time the first beauty! My wife took part in the opening of the tomb and remembers that journalists were present at the opening and one of them, a local, asked her about the results after the work was completed. Frustrated, he replied that the main result was zero, because there were no skulls, it was impossible to recreate the looks of the Godunovs. The journalist was embarrassed and said: "We are to blame." As a boy, he and his peers already “opened up” the graves, hoping to find treasures in the royal burials, and, finding nothing, they threw out the skulls out of anger. Until the end of his life, Mikhail Mikhailovich worked at the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences, he had a laboratory at this institute, which still exists. Gerasimov defended his doctoral dissertation according to his thick book “Face Restoration from the Skull”, he was invited to many countries, in particular to America - come, we will pay you three thousand dollars for each sculpture (this is back in those days!). But he refused and went only to Germany, to the GDR, where there were three skulls "belonging" to Schiller. When he saw them, he immediately rejected one: he was clearly female. By the way, when Mikhail Mikhailovich was asked how he could distinguish a male skull from a female one at first glance, he answered that it was simply obvious, and, explaining, he added: “The female one is always more beautiful ...” Of the two remaining male ones, he chose the one that responded more to the well-known portraits of Schiller. And he told us that when he restored, sculpted, applied layer after layer, and the Germans were standing behind, then suddenly one of them began to shout: “He-he-he!” - Schiller began to appear under the hands of Gerasimov.
[ True, relatively recently there was information in the media that Gerasimov did not reconstruct the appearance of Schiller, as the confusion with the skulls continued ]
Gerasimov interested me not just as a person; although our professions are mutually impenetrable, I have always been fascinated by his work. I was the first to “reveal” to my wife that there is such a Gerasimov, even before the war, having read an article in a Leningrad newspaper about a specialist who can reconstruct the appearance from the skull. A few years later we met and became friends. A cheerful, interesting interlocutor, with whom it is pleasant to sit and talk, speculate about this and that. It was not boring with him. He told us all kinds of fascinating stories, it was a pleasure to communicate with him, it does not matter at all on what topic.
Of course, he possessed both incredible imagination and extra-logical knowledge - knowledge that is completely incomprehensible to us, and, in addition, phenomenal powers of observation. Mikhail Mikhailovich saw everything, including what others would never notice. And this natural observation, which did not require him to special efforts, was an essential component of his talent. Without this amazing gift, he would hardly have been able to develop a method for restoring the appearance of a person from his skull.
Every science has its own outstanding person, perhaps a genius. This is Gerasimov. When he excavated, he even noticed the ashes: someone smoked many years ago when he robbed the grave. In Altai, where the soil is permafrost, he found things that other archaeologists did not even see with all their desire.
It is characteristic that scientists did not recognize him at first, he was recognized by the Criminal Investigation Department, the first who gave him official orders, and used his results. Naturally, he was always a little afraid of this world, and these works of his were not advertised, not because they were secret, but so that they would not “get” him. Mikhail Mikhailovich treated this kind of work as a necessity, we have never heard that he received any special money for this. After all, the Criminal Investigation Department was a state organization, it turned to another state institution, to the institute where Gerasimov worked, and for his salary, he made them an incredibly difficult reconstruction.
M.M. Gerasimov with students - laboratory staff
There was also a plus in this: the Criminal Investigation Department cannot be confused by skeptical theoretical chatter, therefore, all initial talk that Gerasimov's works were charlatanism was refuted by the practice of the Criminal Investigation Department. And this was convincing - if crimes are revealed on the basis of Gerasimov's reconstructions, then everything is true.
Now the work begun by Gerasimov is continued by his students and the students of his students, not only in Moscow. These works initiated similar studies and the creation of portrait reconstructions in other countries. However, the reconstructions of Mikhail Mikhailovich, perhaps, continue to be in some way the pinnacle of skill. After all, although the technique he developed allows, as he himself claimed, any trained specialist to create a portrait reconstruction, in his works this general technique was supplemented by his fantastic observation: working with the skull, he saw in it a lot that an ordinary specialist is simply not able to notice, but which specified this reconstruction.
"Feast". Friendly cartoon. MM. Gerasimov surrounded by ancient people and historical figures, whose appearance was reconstructed by him
In professional conversations with sculptors, when they claimed that his work is not sculpture, not piece of art, he answered: right, not artistic, this is a document. And you will make art on it. That is, he always believed that he was engaged in a “document”, and not high art. And he was, by the way, a very artistically gifted person. The sculptor's main task is to convey spiritual state character through his appearance, like the artist. And with Gerasimov - to achieve a portrait resemblance, and the closest. He created a portrait according to the state of a person on the day of his death, and not in general.
True, if desired, he could “rejuvenate”, according to common sense, from experience, but in general he fixed the appearance on the day of death.
I don't know if he believed in God. I don't think... They never talked about it, in those days it was irrelevant. And he did not have the feeling that he was acting blasphemously in relation to burials. No, he was a true scientist. True, not for the church, but for the museum, he restored in Novgorod the image of Archbishop Vasily, not only a religious, but also a major political figure of his time, one of the significant figures in the history of Novgorod. The church reacted then to this work of his quite indifferently.
All his life, Mikhail Mikhailovich dealt with the dead, but he retained both gaiety, enthusiasm, and extraordinary sociability. And that's okay. In Shakespeare, all the executioners are great jokers, and the gravediggers are wits. The thing is, you get used to everything. And besides, it must be said that when he dealt with the dead, they were no longer perceived by him as dead. Just stuff to work with, skulls, bones. But he also needed to study the heads of the dead in morgues, just as Michelangelo Buonarotti needed to dissect corpses in order to understand the structure of human muscles. Working with corpses, Gerasimov came to the conclusion that after death something changes in the tissues of the human body, and therefore, for control and clarification, he began to work on radiographs - additionally. He asked his doctor friends to give him such radiographs. One of them decided to play a joke and put his own in a pack of x-rays. Going through them, Gerasimov asked: “And when did you shoot?”. It was impossible to lead him, he was incredibly observant.
Before his work, it was believed all over the world: it was impossible to make a portrait from a skull. Nobody believed in what he did, because the general world science believed that it was possible to make a generalized type, but not a portrait of a specific person, some Ivan Ivanovich. It is not surprising that one American anthropologist said in those early years about Gerasimov's tests: “This cannot be. I refuse to believe my own eyes!..”.
whole era left with this man.
Photo of an anthropological reconstruction (sculptural bust) of the head from the skull of a man of the Eneolithic era from the settlement of Gladunino 3 / Kurgan region.
Reconstruction of the face from the skull of a man from kurgan 4 of the Taldy II burial ground. The burial ground is located near the village of Kasym Amanzholov, 300 km. from the city of Karaganda of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The burial correlates with the Tasmolin culture of the early Iron Age. The author of the excavations A.Z. Beisenov.
Sungir 1 - plastic reconstruction of the skull of a man 40-50 years old, whose remains were found at the Upper Paleolithic site of an ancient man in the Vladimir region. The parking lot is located on the eastern outskirts of Vladimir at the confluence of the stream of the same name into the Klyazma River, a kilometer from Bogolyubovo. Discovered in 1955 during the construction of the plant and studied by O. N. Bader.
Atlasovskoye 2 burial was discovered in 2014 in the area of the Botanical Garden of the North-Eastern Federal University, also by accident. In the grave pit there were iron stirrups and a bit, a knife in a birch bark sheath, iron scissors, metal parts of the headdress, an earring, leather parts of the breastplate with sewn metal plaques. The remains belonged to a woman who died at the age of 30-40. The burial dates back to the XIV-XVII centuries. (carbon dating), refers to the Kulun-Atakh late medieval culture, which was widespread in Central Yakutia and Vilyui in the 14th-16th centuries.
Brusnitsyn Lev Ivanovich (1784/86 - 1857) - the son of an artisan, from 1795 he began working at the Yekaterinburg gold mines, as a washer at a gold crushing factory. For diligence in 1813 he was approved by the Pochsteiger. For many years he searched for alluvial gold, in 1814 he discovered the existence of gold-bearing layers in the valleys of the Ural rivers (in contrast to the inefficient diligent pan washing on the banks). Invented mechanisms and worked out the technology of industrial production of alluvial gold. He went to all regions of Russia, where he taught and implemented his method of prospecting and mining, which led to a revolution in the gold mining industry and allowed Russia to take the first place in the world in gold mining by 1830. In 1814, he received the rank of chief foreman, and in 1835 - the rank of chief foreman. In 1845 he retired and was awarded a silver medal.
Portrait of a 50-60-year-old man from burial 27 of the historical and cultural object near the village of Zeleny Yar (Salekhard, YaNAO, Tyumen region), including burials of two periods of the early Middle Ages (VIII-IX centuries and XII-XIII centuries). The restoration of the appearance of the mummified man was carried out using computed tomography and 3D printing.
The Sergelyakh burial was found in the area of the Sergelyakh highway, Yakutsk, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). According to AMS-dating, the age of the burial is the middle of the 15th-beginning of the 16th centuries, i.e. it refers to the Kulun-Atakh late medieval culture, which was widespread in Central Yakutia and Vilyui in the 14th-16th centuries.
The remains in the burial belong to a man who died at the age of 35-45. Damage to the skull indicates the death of a person from wounds inflicted by bladed weapons.
Sculptural reconstruction based on an artificially deformed skull of a woman from the burial mound Mandesarka-6 (Chelyabinsk region). Late Sarmatian culture II-III centuries AD The author of the excavations is Maria Makurova. Author Alexey Nechvaloda. Reconstruction tinting Elena Nechvaloda. Material: plastic, acrylic paint. Exhibit: Museum-Reserve "Arkaim".
Sculptural reconstruction based on a manual model of skull No. 34640 (presumably identified as belonging to the last Inca emperor Ataulpa (?)) stored in the Museum of Man in Paris. Photo of the skull courtesy of the Museum of Man.
Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from the Urzhar district of the East Kazakhstan region, where an unplundered burial of a woman of the Saka time was found in one of the barrows. When buried, ceramic and wooden vessels and bones of a sacrificial animal - a sheep were found. On the bones of the human skeleton, remnants of fabric from blue and green clothes have been preserved. Gold earrings and a stone altar were found at the head of the buried woman - an indispensable attribute of women's burials of that time. The most valuable is a pointed gold headdress, richly decorated with floral patterns and zoomorphic ornaments. The headdress also has arrow-shaped tops decorated with a spiral of gold wire. The lower part of the item was decorated with ancient zergers with fluted pendants. In form and ornamental incarnation, the find resembles folk Kazakh women's headdresses saukele and borik. Photo: O. Belyalov
Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the burial mound Tashla-I. Srubno-Alakulsky syncretic burial ground. Excavations by Yanina Rafikova. Author Alexey Nechvaloda. Material: plaster toned. Exhibit: National Museum of the Republic of Bashkotostan.
Sculptural reconstruction of the skull of a man with an artificially deformed skull from the Tanabergen II burial ground. Late Sarmatian culture of the III century. n. e. (Western Kazakhstan). Excavations by Arman Bisembaev. Author Alexey Nechvaloda. Material: plaster toned. Exhibit: Aktobe Museum of History and Local Lore.
Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from barrow 16 of the Berel barrow necropolis (Kazakh Altai). Pazyrykskaya culture V-IV centuries BC e. Excavations by Zainulla Samashev.
Author Alexey Nechvaloda. Material: plastic, acrylic paint.
Exhibit: National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from barrow 16 of the Berel barrow necropolis (Kazakh Altai). Pazyryk culture of the 5th-4th centuries. BC e. Excavations by Zainulla Samashev. Author Alexey Nechvaloda. Material: plastic, acrylic paint. Exhibit: National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from barrow 16 of the Berel barrow necropolis (Kazakh Altai). Pazyryk culture of the 5th-4th centuries. BC e. Excavations by Zainulla Samashev. Author Alexey Nechvaloda. Material: plastic, acrylic paint. Exhibit: National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Addiction. Mikhail Mikhailovich Gerasimov
Boris Viktorovich Raushenbakh - Soviet and Russian mechanical physicist, one of the founders of Soviet cosmonautics, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, laureate of the Lenin Prize
Raushenbakh B.V.:– I’ll start the story about Gerasimov with a fact that, at first glance, is not the most significant: once my wife and I bought a “hill” especially for the works of Mikhail Mikhailovich, for fantastic little figures that he deftly made from silver foil from chocolate at our numerous tea parties; from drinks Mich. Mikh., as we called him in an informal setting, recognized only tea and did not take alcohol in his mouth. During conversations, many animals of different breeds, fabulous creatures, primitive animals were created; they are stored in our hill and, unfortunately, have already suffered from time, although we want to keep everything that he gave.
Here, for example, a figurine - a certain monster absorbs fish. This is Anti-Rybinsk. The fact is that in the most troubled time of my life I was supposed to be sent to Rybinsk for an uninteresting job, and the figurine was made as a “talisman”, a kind of witchcraft, so that I would not be sent to Rybinsk. For many years my wife was associated with Mikhail Mikhailovich Gerasimov with common professional interests, attracted him to improve the exposition of the Historical Museum, where she held the position of deputy director for science and where to this day there are no longer comic miniatures from silver foil, but large sculptures of the laureate Stalin Prize Gerasimov, for example, the bust of the famous Prince Vsevolod, brother of Prince Igor, Bui-Tur Vsevolod, sung by the chronicler "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": "... where his golden helmet sparkles, there lie Polovtsian heads." Our friendship was long and very strong - I met him and became friends after the war, when I returned from the camp, and Vera Mikhailovna met during the war. The family of Mikhail Mikhailovich was then evacuated to Tashkent, and he himself moved from Leningrad to Moscow, and later the family moved to him.
Mikhail Geraismov and the reconstruction of Ivan the Terrible
Gerasimov was born in 1907 in Leningrad, his father, a doctor, in 1908 left with all the household members for Irkutsk to a resettlement point - in those years many migrants went to Siberia, he treated everyone in the district, was a great lover of nature, in his library nearby with medical literature there were books about the world of past geological epochs and the writings of Darwin. It is not surprising that Mikhail Mikhailovich also became interested in “antiquities” and devoted himself to scientific activity in this area. He was nine years old when he joined the first excavations - near Irkutsk they found the site of an ancient man. His formation as a scientist is typical for talented people of the 20s and 30s, he “reached everything himself”, worked very hard and eventually became a scientist recognized not only in the USSR, but all over the world. In 1931-1932 he studied in Leningrad at the State Academy of Material Culture, in 1937 he was in charge of the restoration workshop of the Hermitage. And he started as an archaeologist in the Irkutsk Museum of Local Lore. Well, of course, he participated in excavations, explored ancient burials. It was then, apparently, that the idea of reconstructing the appearance from the skull was born, because Mikhail Mikhailovich knew well that even in the last century Georges Cuvier had shown how much the bones of extinct animals could tell an observant scientist. Like his predecessors in this field, Gerasimov began with the accumulation of factual material, he began not with a person, but with animals - diplodocus and pterodactyl, with a saber-toothed tiger, mastodon, mammoth. Then - the head of a chimpanzee, his first work on monkeys, it is exhibited at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg. He proved that there is a certain correlation between the bony part of the skull and soft tissues. Based on this, it was possible to recreate muscle tissue from the skull; so Volcker once created a profile of Raphael on his skull, and the question of the authenticity of the burial place of the great artist of the High Renaissance was resolved. There are no two identical skulls in the world, just as there are no two identical faces. One of Gerasimov's first tests was carried out in Leningrad, at the Miklukho-Maclay Museum of Ethnography: he was given a skull, whose, they did not say, and he created a portrait using his own method. Later it turned out that there is, it turns out, a lifetime photograph of this man - a Papuan, whom Miklukho-Maclay once brought to Russia; the Papuan fell ill and died in St. Petersburg, but his photographic image has been preserved. By giving Gerasimov the skull of a Papuan, the skeptics wanted to show the imperfection of his methodology. They were sure that they would receive a sculpture of a European, but they received a Papuan. So one of the tests of Gerasimov's art was made. For another control experiment in 1940, Gerasimov received a skull found in one of the crypts of the Moscow cemetery. The man lived about a hundred years ago and was a relative of the famous Russian writer - Gerasimov was told about this, but nothing else! He set to work, it turned out to be very painstaking, but Gerasimov managed to determine that the skull belonged to a relatively young woman. Therefore, restoring her face, he made her a hairstyle, which was worn at that time. After the work was completed, Mikhail Mikhailovich was told that they had restored the head of Maria Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky's mother, and her lifetime portrait, the only one painted when she was twenty years old, was preserved. She died later, at thirty-seven, but the resemblance between the reconstruction and the portrait was striking - one face!.. Criminologists also quickly learned about the work of M.M. Gerasimov, he provided them with constant and very significant assistance. He told us about several cases. A boy disappeared in Leningrad, they couldn’t find him for a very long time, in the end a skeleton was discovered, the skull was given to Gerasimov, he made a reconstruction, and then they began to look for who owns the image. When the boy's parents were given a pack of photographs, they immediately selected exactly those that were taken from the painted and dressed reconstruction of Gerasimov. Before the war in Stalingrad, a certain husband said that his pregnant wife had disappeared. A year later, the teacher with the children went to the forest to collect a herbarium and came across the remains of a skeleton and a skull. The new prosecutor of the city, a woman, sorting through cases, found a case of disappearance, it seemed to her that the found skull could belong to the missing, she put it in a parcel and sent it to Mikhail Mikhailovich. He made a reconstruction, a hairstyle that the missing woman wore, and when the sculpture was shown to her husband, he immediately confessed to the murder ...
MM. Gerasimov in the sanatorium with a visitor
I repeat that Gerasimov began as an archaeologist, he took up anthropology and sculpture later, before that he carried out many excavations in Siberia. His Siberian excavations of ancient Paleolithic settlements are among the best in the collections of our country. He switched to skull reconstruction later. He himself wrote about this: “The idea of the possibility of restoring the appearance of an ancient man arose in me a very long time ago. The implementation required many years of preparation, as I had to independently develop a method for reconstructing the face from the skull. In parallel with my archaeological work, I studied anthropological material, dissected heads, measuring the thickness of the muscular cover ... A lot of time passed before I dared to offer my work to anthropologists for judgment. God does not give a person only one talent, he either immediately gives a lot, or does not give anything. So it is with Gerasimov. Of course, he was very talented not only as a scientist, but also as an artist and sculptor. He was always interested in the restoration of ancient types - Sinanthropus, Neanderthal, Paleolithic and Neolithic people. And he liked to say when he made a sculpture without a mustache and without a beard, without decorations corresponding to the era, without conjecture - "That's what I'm responsible for." In 1938, in Uzbekistan, in the Tashik-Tash cave, A.P. Okladnikov, later an academician, found an ancient burial of the Stone Age culture. A whole skeleton of a Neanderthal boy was preserved there. Gerasimov restored it to its full height, and, naturally, this received a wide response. Many believed, many did not believe, passions boiled around his work.
In our house there is a small collection of Gerasimov's works, including sculptures of Ivan the Terrible, a Chinese woman from a Chinese trading row in ancient Kazan, and a woman of the fifth millennium BC from the Karavaevsky burial ground in the Vologda region. Mikhail Mikhailovich presented these sculptures (tinted plaster) to my wife, because, in particular, the last skull was taken from the excavations of Vera Mikhailovich. I don’t remember if he did anything in bronze, but when he restored the portrait of Schiller, he liked the poet’s face so much that Gerasimov carved it in marble; this bust is kept by the wife of Mikhail Mikhailovich, Tamara Sergeevna. Several of his largest works have not only archaeological, but also historical and cultural significance. For example, Yaroslav the Wise, whose tomb was opened in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. No one then was sure whether Yaroslav was or not Yaroslav. In the annals, he was called the "lame-footed prince", and the skeleton had one leg shorter than the other. That is, everything was for the fact that this is the skeleton of Yaroslav. And Gerasimov restored his appearance! There were, of course, hesitation, until in 1941 a fresco depicting Prince Yaroslav was discovered in St. Sophia Cathedral under a layer of late plaster, and although frescoes are always more generalized than a portrait miniature, the resemblance to the restored appearance was undeniable. The recovery process is incredibly painstaking.
MM. Gerasimov and Skilur
Well, at least one detail: eye sockets and a pear-shaped hole in place of the nose. And who knows what kind of nose it was? After all, the nasal bones end high, then comes the cartilage. It would seem that any nose can be imagined: both upturned and hooked - whatever. Through a huge number of experiments, Gerasimov established that if a tangent line is drawn through the last third of the nasal bones, and a straight line is also drawn from the nasal spike, as if continuing it, then the intersection point will mark the tip of the nose in all hundred percent. And the shape of the nose, its width depends on the width of the pear-shaped opening ... The most difficult thing, Gerasimov admitted, for him is the ear. The ear, as he said, he did not fully master. The excavations of the burial place of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the son of Yuri Dolgoruky, were very interesting. As you know, he refused to live with his father in Kyiv and went to reign in Vladimir, where he built a magnificent palace and cathedral in Bogolyubovo. The boyars and princes, forced to obey him, secretly hated him. The chronicle says: "I hate Prince Andrei ... and there was a fierce scolding in the Rostov and Suzdal lands." In 1175, Prince Andrei was killed in his own palace. There was nothing to argue about the fact that Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky was in the burial: there was a princely ax with the letter “A” nearby. But in the process of restoring the appearance, a certain type arose, for which, as Gerasimov said, he is responsible - the type is clearly Mongoloid. A rather extensive circle of Gerasimov's ill-wishers kept repeating: well, what kind of son is Yuri Dolgoruky, how can a Russian person have such a Mongoloid face? In the end, they found in the documents: it turns out that Yuri Dolgoruky was married to the daughter of the Polovtsian Khan by his second marriage, Andrei from his mother and inherited these characteristic features. Moreover, the setting of his head was very curious. The chronicles say that Prince Andrei was so arrogant that when the ambassadors of foreign powers appeared, he did not bow to them. Mikhail Mikhailovich took up this, and it turned out that the prince was suffering from some kind of serious illness, his cervical vertebrae had fused, and he could not tilt his head. Not only the history of Russia, but also the history of Central Asia interested him. In this regard, it is impossible not to tell about the restoration of portraits of the Timurids by him: Timur himself, his sons and grandson. Many legends are associated with Timur Guragan, one of them tells about his injury, and he had a great many of them. Once Timur with his cavalry was returning from a campaign, and at sunset they entered a semi-dark gorge. Towards them - some kind of squad. According to the customs of that time, a meeting with an unknown detachment actually always led to a fight. It was getting dark, and over Timur's head, as the legend says, the leader of the oncoming cavalry raised his saber, shouting his battle tribal cry. By this call, Timur recognized his father and intercepted his saber on the fly ... When Gerasimov opened the tomb, it turned out that a callus passed through the entire left palm of Timur, along its back, which means that the hand was still cut. Here's a legend for you! In the mausoleum of Gur-Emir, the graves of Timur's sons - Shahrukh and Miranshah, as well as Ulugbek, the grandson of Timur, a famous scientist of his time, astronomer, poet and healer, were opened. Ulugbek was so great as an astronomer that even in medieval Europe, along with Ptolemy and a couple of other scientists, he was considered a pillar of astronomy, his astronomical tables were striking in their accuracy, and they were used even centuries after his death. Ulugbek was not only a scientist, but also a progressive ruler, which could not please the court circles. He was forced to abdicate and make a penitential journey to Muslim shrines. Immediately after leaving the capital, assassins sent by the new ruler, Khan Abbas, overtook him and cut off his head. The opening of the grave showed that Ulugbek's head had indeed been cut off. This fact, like the dissected palm of Timur, allowed Gerasimov to say: “Rarely do archaeologists come across such documentary confirmation, illustrating chronicle evidence and folk tales, as in this case.” Work in Gur-Emir took place in the summer of 1941. Since the tomb of Timur is a place of religious veneration of his ashes by the population of the country, in order not to cause popular discontent, permission was received not only from the Uzbek government, but also from religious authorities who ensured that Sharia laws were not violated anywhere. This provided a calm environment during work. Mikhail Mikhailovich successfully completed his business by mid-June. However, when he was about to leave, the local old men came to him and said: you supposedly opened the tomb in vain. He replied: how is it, I did everything taking into account religious rules, the mullahs accompanied my every step.
MM. Gerasimov at his desk
That's all right, they answer, but there is a legend that if you open Timur's grave, the spirit of war will come out of it, and now you'll see what happens next. A couple of days later, Nazi Germany attacked the USSR. Such is the "mystical" fact. This he himself told, in his story there were both surprise and an ironic attitude towards his person. Mikhail Mikhailovich generally possessed all sorts of mystical properties. Well, for example, he said that when digging a Paleolithic site, he could not succeed in any way, and on the night before he found what he needed there, he saw all this in a dream. And in the morning he already knew where to dig and what would happen there. This is his too own words . Let us return, however, to Russia. I cannot fail to mention the restoration of the portrait of Admiral Ushakov. The Ministry of the Navy announced a competition for the creation of a sculptural portrait of Ushakov for the anniversary of Ushakov, and Mikhail Mikhailovich offered to open the grave of the admiral for this purpose. The work turned out to be very difficult, the ground signs of the burial were not preserved, I had to raise all the documents that there was a chapel there, and near the chapel, there, Ushakov was buried. And the chapel, I must say, also did not survive. But then, of course, Gerasimov, as an archaeologist, found the remains of the chapel, found the grave, opened it. There was no doubt that Ushakov's skeleton was there - his admiral's stripes were preserved. And now Gerasimov makes a portrait. And passions boiled up again. There is a lifetime portrait of Ushakov, it depicts a nobleman with a nobly elongated face. When Mikhail Mikhailovich created his reconstruction, Ushakov turned out to have a completely different chin, heavy, almost square, strong-willed. Of course, certain canons were observed in the portraits of dignitaries of that time, the nobleman was supposed to be a refined courtier, but you can’t argue with the fact, as they say. And when the film “Admiral Ushakov” was filmed, the actor was already made up to look like Gerasimov. For many years, Mikhail Mikhailovich wanted to make a portrait of Ivan the Terrible - there are no reliable images of the Terrible, only the sculpture of Antokolsky (naturally, not a portrait) and some kind of old parsuna, made in the traditional icon-painting style. Gerasimov bothered a lot about Grozny during Stalin's lifetime, and he said that it was, of course, very tempting, instructing Voroshilov to meet with Gerasimov, and Voroshilov conveyed Stalin's words that in principle it would be good, but now is not the time - there is a war going on. Already after the death of Stalin, it was decided to allow Gerasimov to make such a portrait, but for a reason: the Palace of Congresses was being built, and the water regime of the Kremlin hill was violated. The Archangel Cathedral, the tomb of the Russian tsars, began to deform because it stood on piles, and the piles began to die. Work began on strengthening the Archangel Cathedral, and it was then that it was allowed to open the tomb of Ivan the Terrible at the same time. Making a portrait of the king, Gerasimov discovered that he, apparently, in the last years of his life was seriously ill with dropsy. The characteristic puffiness is noticeable on the sculpture. During the war, not being able to open the tomb of Ivan the Terrible, Gerasimov received permission to open the tomb of Boris Godunov and his family, since it was not in the Kremlin, but in Zagorsk. The tomb of the Godunovs is located right in front of the Assumption Cathedral and was devastated upon opening: the preservation is amazing, perfect reconstructions could have been created, even the silk fabrics with which the coffin of Maria Feodorovna was covered survived, the shirt of Tsarevich Fyodor, made of strips of leather, survived, the shoes of Princess Xenia were preserved, but... the skulls were thrown away. And Xenia was considered at that time the first beauty! My wife took part in the opening of the tomb and remembers that journalists were present at the opening and one of them, a local, asked her about the results after the work was completed. Frustrated, he replied that the main result was zero, because there were no skulls, it was impossible to recreate the looks of the Godunovs. The journalist was embarrassed and said: "We are to blame." As a boy, he and his peers already “opened up” the graves, hoping to find treasures in the royal burials, and, finding nothing, they threw out the skulls out of anger. Until the end of his life, Mikhail Mikhailovich worked at the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences, he had a laboratory at this institute, which still exists. According to his thick book “Restoration of a Face from the Skull”, Gerasimov defended his doctoral dissertation, he was invited to many countries, in particular to America - come, we will pay you three thousand dollars for each sculpture (this was back in those days!). But he refused and went only to Germany, to the GDR, where there were three skulls "belonging" to Schiller. When he saw them, he immediately rejected one: he was clearly female. By the way, when Mikhail Mikhailovich was asked how he could distinguish a male skull from a female one at first glance, he answered that it was simply obvious, and, explaining, he added: “The female one is always more beautiful ...” Of the two remaining male ones, he chose the one that responded more to the well-known portraits of Schiller. And he told us that when he restored, sculpted, applied layer after layer, and the Germans were standing behind, then suddenly one of them began to shout: “He-he-he!” - Schiller began to appear under the hands of Gerasimov. The original reconstruction is kept in Germany, and the bust marble image, as I have already said, belongs to the wife of Mikhail Mikhailovich. What kind of person was he? Unusually sociable, surprisingly attentive, very educated. You talk to him for ten minutes, and you have the impression that you know his years. good father, good husband... In 1994, his daughters decided to arrange a small exhibition of their father's works, begged for some kind of little room in the house administration, like a red corner, and set up an exposition there; she lasted two months. Gerasimov's daughters made this exhibition on their own, with their own money, but how many people could see it in this “red corner”! Unfortunately, all interest in the author of extraordinary, talented works has been lost. But he was a completely unique person, and he lived to be only sixty-two years old.
MM. Gerasimov at the excavations
Gerasimov interested me not just as a person; although our professions are mutually impenetrable, I have always been fascinated by his work. I was the first to “reveal” to my wife that there is such a Gerasimov, even before the war, having read an article in a Leningrad newspaper about a specialist who can reconstruct the appearance from the skull. A few years later we met and became friends. A cheerful, interesting interlocutor, with whom it is pleasant to sit and talk, speculate about this and that. It was not boring with him. He told us all sorts of fascinating stories, it was a pleasure to communicate with him, it doesn’t matter at all on what topic.
Of course, he possessed both incredible imagination and extra-logical knowledge - knowledge that is completely incomprehensible to us, and, in addition, phenomenal powers of observation. Mikhail Mikhailovich saw everything, including what others would never notice. And this natural observation, which did not require any special effort from him, was an essential component of his talent. Without this amazing gift, he would hardly have been able to develop a method for restoring the appearance of a person from his skull.
Every science has its own outstanding person, perhaps a genius. This is Gerasimov. When he excavated, he even noticed the ashes: someone smoked many years ago when he robbed the grave. In Altai, where the soil is permafrost, he found things that other archaeologists did not even see with all their desire.
On an expedition
It is characteristic that scientists did not recognize him at first, he was recognized by the Criminal Investigation Department, the first who gave him official orders, and used his results. Naturally, he was always a little afraid of this world, and these works of his were not advertised, not because they were secret, but so that they would not “get” him. Mikhail Mikhailovich treated this kind of work as a necessity, we have never heard that he received any special money for this. After all, the Criminal Investigation Department was a state organization, it turned to another state institution, to the institute where Gerasimov worked, and for his salary, he made them an incredibly difficult reconstruction.
There was also a plus in this: the Criminal Investigation Department cannot be confused by skeptical theoretical chatter, therefore, all initial talk that Gerasimov’s works were charlatanism was refuted by the practice of the Criminal Investigation Department. And this convinced me that if crimes are revealed on the basis of Gerasimov's reconstructions, then everything is true.
Now the work begun by Gerasimov is continued by his students and the students of his students, not only in Moscow. These works initiated similar studies and the creation of portrait reconstructions in other countries. However, the reconstructions of Mikhail Mikhailovich, perhaps, continue to be in some way the pinnacle of skill. After all, although the technique he developed allows, as he himself claimed, any trained specialist to create a portrait reconstruction, in his works this general technique was supplemented by his fantastic observation: working with the skull, he saw in it a lot that an ordinary specialist is simply not able to notice, but which specified this reconstruction.
In professional conversations with sculptors, when they claimed that his work was not a sculpture, not a work of art, he answered: right, not artistic, it is a document. And you will make art on it. That is, he always believed that he was engaged in a “document”, and not high art. And he was, by the way, a very artistically gifted person. The sculptor's main task is to convey the spiritual state of the character through his appearance, just like the artist. And with Gerasimov - to achieve a portrait resemblance, and the closest. He created a portrait according to the state of a person on the day of his death, and not in general.
True, if desired, he could “rejuvenate”, according to common sense, from experience, but in general he fixed the appearance on the day of death. And Ivan the Terrible, who stands on our hill, was like that on the day of his death from dropsy. I asked: does something change from a near-death illness in the structure of the bones of the skull? Of course, he answers, he changes. But again, it was about such subtleties that an ordinary specialist would most likely not notice, but he felt it all one hundred percent. There are such phenomenal people who see or hear more than others, maybe he could hear what we do not hear. Music of the spheres...
Academician B.V. Rauschenbach
I don't know if he believed in God. I don't think... They never talked about it, in those days it was irrelevant. And he did not have the feeling that he was acting blasphemously in relation to burials. No, he was a true scientist. True, not for the church, but for the museum, he restored in Novgorod the image of Archbishop Vasily, not only a religious, but also a major political figure of his time, one of the significant figures in the history of Novgorod. The church reacted then to this work of his quite indifferently.
All his life, Mikhail Mikhailovich dealt with the dead, but he retained both gaiety, enthusiasm, and extraordinary sociability. And that's okay. In Shakespeare, all the executioners are great jokers, and the gravediggers are wits. The thing is, you get used to everything. And besides, it must be said that when he dealt with the dead, they were no longer perceived by him as dead. Just stuff to work with, skulls, bones. But he also needed to study the heads of the dead in morgues, just as Michelangelo Buonarotti needed to dissect corpses in order to understand the structure of human muscles. Working with corpses, Gerasimov came to the conclusion that after death something changes in the tissues of the human body, and therefore, for control and clarification, he began to work on radiographs - additionally. He asked his doctor friends to give him such radiographs. One of them decided to play a joke and put his own in a pack of x-rays. Going through them, Gerasimov asked: “And when did you shoot?”. It was impossible to lead him, he was incredibly observant.
Before his work, it was believed all over the world: it was impossible to make a portrait from a skull. Nobody believed in what he did, because the general world science believed that it was possible to make a generalized type, but not a portrait of a specific person, some Ivan Ivanovich. It is not surprising that one American anthropologist said in those early years about Gerasimov's tests: “This cannot be. I refuse to believe my own eyes!..”.
An entire era has gone with this man.
- (1907 70) Russian anthropologist, archaeologist and sculptor, doctor historical sciences. Work on the restoration (based on skeletal remains) of the appearance of fossil people and a number of historical figures (Ivan the Terrible, Ulugbek, Ushakov, etc.). ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
Soviet anthropologist, sculptor and archaeologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences (1956), head of the laboratory of plastic reconstruction of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1950-70). Known for his work in... Big soviet encyclopedia
- (1907 1970), anthropologist, archaeologist and sculptor, doctor of historical sciences. Restoration work on the basis of skeletal remains of the appearance of fossil people and a number of historical figures (Ivan IV the Terrible, Ulugbek, F.F. Ushakov and others). ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
Genus. September 2 (15), 1907, in St. Petersburg, in the family of a doctor, mind. July 21, 1970, in Moscow. Sculptor, anthropologist and archaeologist, creator of the method of plastic portrait reconstruction, student of the Irkutsk school of paleoethnology. Method creator... Big biographical encyclopedia
- ... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people with that surname, see Gerasimov. Wikipedia has articles about other people with this last name, see Gerasimov, Mikhail. Gerasimov Mikhail Mikhailovich Date of birth: August 8, 1936 (1936 08 08) (76 years old) ... Wikipedia
Wikipedia has articles about other people with that surname, see Gerasimov. Gerasimov, Mikhail Kuzmich (1920 1993) full holder of the Order of Glory. Gerasimov, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1907-1970) anthropologist, archaeologist and sculptor. Gerasimov, Mikhail ... ... Wikipedia
Mikhail Mikhailovich Gerasimov was born on September 2 (15), 1907 in St. Petersburg. His father, a zemstvo doctor, in 1908 left with all his household members for a resettlement center in Irkutsk - in those years many settlers went to Siberia - and, taking the place of the head of the medical unit of the resettlement center, he treated everyone in the district, was a great lover of nature, in his library, next to the medical literature, were books about the world of past geological epochs and the writings of Darwin. It is not surprising that Misha became interested in “antiquities”. In addition, since childhood, he was good at sculpting and drawing. School did not interest him. Real life began there, beyond the school threshold. A burning interest in how our ancestors lived and looked determined the circle of Mikhail's occupations. He was 9 years old when he joined the first excavations - near Irkutsk they found the site of an ancient man. From the age of 11, together with the professor of Petrograd University Bernhard Eduardovich Petri, whom he later considered his teacher, he took part in the archaeological excavations of Verkholenskaya Gora (a suburb of Irkutsk). From the age of 13 he worked in the anatomical museum at the Faculty of Medicine Irkutsk University, spent a lot of time in the morgue, studying the connections between the soft tissues of the face and the bones of the skull. He studied under the guidance of the forensic physician Professor Grigoriev and the anatomist Kazantsev. The first burial of people of the Stone Age in Irkutsk was opened at the age of 14, the second - at 17. At the age of 18, he published his first scientific article about the archaeological excavations of the Paleolithic location near the resettlement point - Innokentievskaya station (now Irkutsk II). His Siberian excavations of ancient Paleolithic settlements are among the best in the collections of our country. He switched to skull reconstruction later.
His formation as a scientist is typical for talented people of the 20s and 30s, he “reached everything himself”, worked very hard and eventually became a scientist recognized not only in the USSR, but all over the world. 1927–1928 became significant. Gerasimov discovers a Mesolithic settlement in Khabarovsk, a reference multi-layered Mesolithic monument on the Angara - Ust-Belaya, a burial ground of the Kitoi period in Irkutsk and, finally, the most important object in its archaeological practice and one of the pearls of the Paleolithic era - the site of Malta (not far from Irkutsk). In 1928, being an Irutsky employee local history museum(since 1922), Gerasimov arrived in the village of Malta (Usolsky district of the Irkutsk region), where, shortly before, a mammoth tusk was discovered by a local resident. His research work led to the discovery of the world-famous Upper Paleolithic site of Malta, which became a worldwide sensation: bone sculptures were found, previously known only from excavations in Western Europe. Among the finds are 15 dwellings with walls made of mammoth bones, stone and bone tools, works early art(“Maltinsky Venus”, drawings on mammoth tusks), the burial of a four-year-old child. The first attempts by Mikhail Mikhailovich to reconstruct the appearance of a fossil man date back to 1927. His reconstructions of ancient people - Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal - are still kept in the Irkutsk Museum of Local Lore. At the same time, Mikhail Mikhailovich conducted an experiment on processing mammoth tusk, tubular bones and deer antler. The result is an article that is the only one of its kind to date.
It is not known for certain when the idea of reconstructing the appearance from the skull (which later resulted in the so-called "Gerasimov method") was born. Gerasimov himself wrote as follows: “The idea of the possibility of restoring the appearance of an ancient man arose in me a very long time ago. The implementation required many years of preparation, as I had to independently develop a method for reconstructing the face from the skull. In parallel with my archaeological work, I studied anthropological material, dissected heads, measuring the thickness of the muscular cover ... A lot of time passed before I ventured to offer my work to anthropologists.
But most likely, it was the excavations that prompted him to this idea, because Mikhail Mikhailovich was fascinated by the works of the French naturalist and naturalist of the 19th century Georges Cuvier and his experiments on reconstructing the appearance of extinct animals. Like his predecessors in this field, Gerasimov began with the accumulation of factual material, he began not with a person, but with animals - diplodocus and pterodactyl, with a saber-toothed tiger, mastodon, mammoth. Then - the head of a chimpanzee, his first work on monkeys, it is exhibited at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in St. Petersburg. He proved that there is a certain correlation between the bony part of the skull and soft tissues. Based on this, it was possible to recreate muscle tissue from the skull; so Volcker once created a profile of Raphael on his skull, and the question of the authenticity of the burial place of the great artist of the High Renaissance was resolved.
In 1931-1932 he studied in Leningrad at the State Academy of Material Culture. In 1932, in connection with the upcoming International Quaternary Congress, Mikhail Mikhailovich was invited to Leningrad, where he combined archeology with work, and then, from 1937, with the management of the restoration workshops of the Hermitage. However, even after moving to the banks of the Neva, he constantly traveled to excavations in the Angara region.
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| A boy from the Teshik-Tash cave. |
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| Sinanthropus / Homo erectus Location: Zhoukoudian (China) |
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| Homo heidelbergensis (female) Location: Steinheim (Germany) |
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| Homo neanderthalensis (female) Location: Gibraltar |
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| Homo sapiens Location: Sungir |
It is characteristic that scientists did not recognize it at first. He was recognized by the Criminal Investigation Department - the first who gave him official orders and used his results. Naturally, he was always a little afraid of this world, and these works of his were not advertised, not because they were secret, but so that they would not “get” him. Mikhail Mikhailovich treated this kind of work as a necessity, it is not even known that he received any special money for this work. After all, the Criminal Investigation Department was a state organization, it turned to another state institution, to the institute where Gerasimov worked, and for his salary, he made them an incredibly difficult reconstruction. There was also a plus in this: the Criminal Investigation Department cannot be confused by skeptical theoretical chatter, therefore, all initial talk that Gerasimov’s works were charlatanism was refuted by the practice of the Criminal Investigation Department. And this convinced me that if crimes are revealed on the basis of Gerasimov's reconstructions, then everything is true.
Here are just a couple of cases from that work. A boy disappeared in Leningrad, they couldn’t find him for a very long time, in the end a skeleton was discovered, the skull was given to Gerasimov, he made a reconstruction, and then they began to look for who owns the image. When the boy's parents were given a pack of photographs, they immediately selected exactly those that were taken from Gerasimov's reconstruction. Another incident occurred in Stalingrad before the war, when a certain husband announced that his pregnant wife had disappeared. A year later, the teacher with the children went to the forest to collect a herbarium and came across the remains of a skeleton and a skull. The new prosecutor of the city, sorting through the cases, found a case of disappearance, it seemed to her that the found skull could belong to the missing, she put it in a parcel and sent it to Mikhail Mikhailovich. He made a reconstruction, a hairstyle that the missing woman wore, and when the sculpture was shown to her husband, he immediately confessed to the murder ...
The desire to find out the degree of approximation to authenticity in the created portraits prompted him to put a series verification work. This meant the reconstruction of the face of a modern person, whose lifetime image has been preserved. One of Gerasimov's first tests was carried out in Leningrad, at the Miklukho-Maclay Museum of Ethnography: he was given a skull, whose, they did not say, and he created a portrait using his own method. Later it turned out that there is, it turns out, a lifetime photograph of this man - a Papuan, whom Miklukho-Maclay once brought to Russia; the Papuan fell ill and died in St. Petersburg, but his photographic image has been preserved. By giving Gerasimov the skull of a Papuan, the skeptics wanted to show the imperfection of his methodology. They were sure that they would receive a sculpture of a European, but they received a Papuan. So one of the tests of Gerasimov's art was made.
For another control experiment in 1940, Gerasimov received a skull found in one of the crypts of the Moscow cemetery. The man lived about a hundred years ago and was a relative of the famous Russian writer - Gerasimov was told about this, but nothing else! He set to work, it turned out to be very painstaking, but Gerasimov managed to determine that the skull belonged to a relatively young woman. Therefore, restoring her face, he made her a hairstyle, which was worn at that time. After the work was completed, Mikhail Mikhailovich was told that they had restored the head of Maria Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky's mother, and her lifetime portrait, the only one painted when she was 20 years old, was preserved. She died later, at 37, but the similarity between the reconstruction and the portrait was striking - one face !
He conducted the first mass experiment in late 1940 - early 1941 at the Lefortovo morgue in Moscow. The control material was photographs taken by representatives of the criminal investigation department and protocols stored in the Lefortovo morgue. Naturally, Gerasimov did not see these documents before showing the reconstructions. A total of 12 control experiments were made on skulls belonging to Russians, Ukrainians, a Pole and a Chinese. The results obtained exceeded all expectations: in all 12 cases, an obvious portrait resemblance was stated.
The methodological techniques developed by the scientist do not claim to be absolute accuracy, and the point here is not only that science has not yet mastered the knowledge of the correlations that bind the human body into a single whole, but also that the very nature of the organism cannot do without a certain degree of independence of variations. . However, Gerasimov, according to his senior colleague, the famous anthropologist Ya.Ya. Roginsky, achieved maximum correspondence between the skull and the face and far outstripped his predecessors in this respect.
Over the years of painstaking work, Mikhail Mikhailovich collected rich material, improved research methods. He found that the relationship between the forms of the facial skeleton and the elements of appearance is much stronger than was commonly believed. Studying it, the scientist used various methodological techniques: preparation and pricking with a smoked needle, transverse and longitudinal cuts, radiography. The latter provided significant information about variations in the shape and thickness of soft tissues, made it possible to study gender differences and age dynamics, and to develop a thickness scale.
With the help of preparation, it was possible to expand the understanding of the asymmetry of the soft covers, which is closely related to the asymmetry of the skull, which, when reproducing the face, largely determines its individuality. The method provides for the obligatory consideration of attachment sites, direction, length and shape of individual muscles and their variability in accordance with the variability of the bone base. Restoration of individual parts of the face - nose, mouth, eyes and ears - is determined by the size, shape and structural features of the nasal ossicles, the shape of the pear-shaped opening, the width of the dental arch, the shape and size of the teeth, bite, structural features of the lower jaw, the shape of the orbit, its depth, structure its edges, etc. and so on.
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| Timur Guragan |
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| Shahrukh (1377 - 1447) - son of Timur, ruler of Samarkand. | Ulugbek (1394 - 1449) - grandson of Timur, ruler of Samarkand |
Work in Gur-Emir took place in the summer of 1941. Since the tomb of Timur is a place of religious veneration of his ashes by the population of the country, in order not to cause popular discontent, permission was received not only from the Uzbek government, but also from religious authorities who ensured that Sharia laws were not violated anywhere. This provided a calm environment during work. Mikhail Mikhailovich successfully completed his business by mid-June. However, when he was about to leave, the local old men came to him and said: you supposedly opened the tomb in vain. He replied: how is it, I did everything taking into account religious rules, the mullahs accompanied my every step. That's all right, they answer, but there is a legend that if you open Timur's grave, the spirit of war will come out of it, and now you'll see what happens next. A couple of days later, Nazi Germany attacked the USSR. Such is the "mystical" fact. This he himself told, in his story there were both surprise and an ironic attitude towards his person. Mikhail Mikhailovich generally possessed all sorts of mystical properties. Well, for example, he said that when digging a Paleolithic site, he could not succeed in any way, and on the night before he found what he needed there, he saw all this in a dream. And in the morning he already knew where to dig and what would happen there. These are also his own words. By the way, on June 20, 1941, Leningradskaya Pravda reported that the jade lid of the coffin had been lifted. “A folk legend that has come down to our days ascribes to this stone the cause of cruel wars ...” the correspondent wrote.
Igor Bunich believes that the true purpose of Gerasimov's expedition was to search for treasures. “The task set by Stalin to concentrate all gold, platinum and precious stones in the hands of the state continued to be vigorously carried out. If in Russia itself and in Ukraine, by the mid-30s, all cemeteries had already been plowed up and almost all the graves had been opened in the hope of finding a gold watch or false teeth, then such events have not been held in the territories of the Central Asian republics for the time being. The desecration of graves and mausoleums, according to the laws of Islam, is one of the most terrible crimes. And since the liberation war in Central Asia, which broke out back in the 1920s, raged unabated and was suppressed only by 1939, having received the romantic name of "the fight against the Basmachi", then Stalin himself and his satraps on the ground still had enough mind not to give unnecessary reason to irritate the local population. But it was the turn of the Central Asian shrines. The majestic mausoleum of Tamerlane in Samarkand especially attracted the greedy eyes of the nomenklatura. According to legends, confirmed by archival documents, the great Asian conqueror in his campaigns stole fabulous, countless treasures, most whom he ordered to be put with him in the tomb. In May 1941, a large team of the Moscow NKVD, accompanied by experts from the Leningrad Hermitage, left for Samarkand to open the tomb. The curator of the memorial, eighty-year-old Masud Alaev, was horrified and showed the visitors a warning inscription carved on the tomb in the year of Tamerlane's death. The inscription warned that whoever dared to disturb the peace of the deceased ruler and open the tomb would release scary demons devastating war. Just in case, to be safe, this was reported to Moscow. An order came from there: to arrest Alaev for spreading false and panicky rumors, to open the tomb immediately. On June 19, 1941, a huge slab of green jade, covering the sarcophagus of Tamerlane, was raised. The TASS report about this event was reprinted by many newspapers on the eve of the war. If this is a coincidence, then it is very strange ”(Bunich I. Party Gold. St. Petersburg, 1992). We add that the calculations of Stalin and the Chekists to gain treasures were completely scientific basis. “Magnetic observations of 1925 over the grave of Timur,” wrote the famous archaeologist M.E. Masson, - confirmed the presence in it of a paramagnetic body, probably the remains of a coffin, and, perhaps, other objects ”(Berezikov E. The magic stone of Timur // Star of the East. 1990. No. 4).
God does not give a person only one talent, he either immediately gives a lot, or does not give anything. So it is with Gerasimov. Communication with highly qualified art historians has played big role in shaping him as a scientist and artist. Of course, he was very talented not only as a scientist, but also as an artist and sculptor. He was always interested in the restoration of ancient types - Sinanthropus, Neanderthal, Paleolithic and Neolithic people. And he liked to say when he made a sculpture without a mustache and without a beard, without decorations corresponding to the era, without conjecture - "That's what I'm responsible for." In professional conversations with sculptors, when they claimed that his work was not a sculpture, not a work of art, he answered: right, not artistic, it is a document. And you will make art on it. That is, he always believed that he was engaged in a “document”, and not high art. And he was, by the way, a very artistically gifted person. The sculptor's main task is to convey the spiritual state of the character through his appearance, just like the artist. And with Gerasimov - to achieve a portrait resemblance, and the closest. He created a portrait according to the state of a person on the day of his death, and not in general.
Created over 200 sculptural portraits-reconstructions of historical figures. Including: Ivan IV the Terrible, F. F. Ushakov, Yaroslav Vladimirovich the Wise, Andrei Yurievich Bogolyubsky and others.
The recovery process is incredibly painstaking. Well, at least one detail: eye sockets and a pear-shaped hole in place of the nose. And who knows what kind of nose it was? After all, the nasal bones end high, then comes the cartilage. It would seem that any nose can be imagined: both upturned and hooked - whatever. Through a huge number of experiments, Gerasimov established that if a tangent line is drawn through the last third of the nasal bones, and a straight line is also drawn from the nasal spike, as if continuing it, then the intersection point will mark the tip of the nose in all hundred percent. And the shape of the nose, its width depends on the width of the pear-shaped opening ... The most difficult thing, Gerasimov admitted, for him is the ear. The ear, as he said, he did not fully master. The excavations of the burial place of Andrei Bogolyubsky, the son of Yuri Dolgoruky, were very interesting. As you know, he refused to live with his father in Kyiv and went to reign in Vladimir, where he built a magnificent palace and cathedral in Bogolyubovo. The boyars and princes, forced to obey him, secretly hated him. The chronicle says: "I hate Prince Andrei ... and there was a fierce scolding in the Rostov and Suzdal lands." In 1175, Prince Andrei was killed in his own palace. There was nothing to argue about the fact that Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky was in the burial: there was a princely ax with the letter “A” nearby. But in the process of restoring the appearance, a certain type arose, for which, as Gerasimov said, he is responsible - the type is clearly Mongoloid. A rather extensive circle of Gerasimov's ill-wishers kept repeating: well, what kind of son is Yuri Dolgoruky, how can a Russian person have such a Mongoloid face? In the end, they found in the documents: it turns out that Yuri Dolgoruky was married to the daughter of the Polovtsian Khan by his second marriage, Andrei from his mother and inherited these characteristic features. Moreover, the setting of his head was very curious. The chronicles say that Prince Andrei was so arrogant that when the ambassadors of foreign powers appeared, he did not bow to them. Mikhail Mikhailovich took up this, and it turned out that the prince was suffering from some kind of serious illness, his cervical vertebrae had fused, and he could not tilt his head.
I cannot fail to mention the restoration of the portrait of Admiral Fyodor Fyodorovich Ushakov. The Ministry of the Navy announced a competition for the creation of a sculptural portrait of Ushakov for the anniversary of Ushakov, and Mikhail Mikhailovich offered to open the grave of the admiral for this purpose. The work turned out to be very difficult, the ground signs of the burial were not preserved, I had to raise all the documents that there was a chapel there, and near the chapel, there, Ushakov was buried. And the chapel, I must say, also did not survive. But then, of course, Gerasimov, as an archaeologist, found the remains of the chapel, found the grave, opened it. There was no doubt that Ushakov's skeleton was there - his admiral's stripes were preserved. And now Gerasimov makes a portrait. And passions boiled up again. There is a lifetime portrait of Ushakov, it depicts a nobleman with a nobly elongated face. When Mikhail Mikhailovich created his reconstruction, Ushakov turned out to have a completely different chin, heavy, almost square, strong-willed. Of course, certain canons were observed in the portraits of dignitaries of that time, the nobleman was supposed to be a refined courtier, but you can’t argue with the fact, as they say. And when the film “Admiral Ushakov” was filmed, the actor was already made up to look like Gerasimov.
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| Reconstruction of the portrait of Ivan the Terrible (initial stage) | Sculptural portrait of Ivan the Terrible |
In 1944 he and his family moved to Moscow. He worked at the Institute of the History of Material Culture. In the same year, 1944, Gerasimov was awarded the Stalin (State) Prize of the III degree. In 1950, at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, a laboratory of plastic reconstruction was established (which still exists) under the guidance of a scientist, which meant the recognition of his method. Gerasimov directed it for 20 years, until the end of his life. According to his thick book “Restoration of a Face from the Skull”, Gerasimov defended his doctoral dissertation, he was invited to many countries, in particular to America - come, we will pay you three thousand dollars for each sculpture (this was back in those days!). But he refused and went only to Germany, to the GDR, where there were three skulls "belonging" to Schiller. When he saw them, he immediately rejected one: he was clearly female. By the way, when Mikhail Mikhailovich was asked how he could distinguish a male skull from a female one at first glance, he answered that it was simply obvious, and, explaining, he added: “The female one is always more beautiful ...” Of the two remaining male ones, he chose the one that responded more to the well-known portraits of Schiller. And he said that when he restored, sculpted, applied layer after layer, and the Germans were standing behind, then suddenly one of them began to shout: “He-he-he!” - Schiller began to appear under the hands of Gerasimov. The original of the reconstruction is kept in Germany, and the bust marble image is kept by the wife of Mikhail Mikhailovich.
During this period, portrait reconstructions of the founder of Farsi poetry Rudaki and one of the leaders of the liberation struggle of the Caucasian highlanders Hadji Murad appeared.
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| MM. Gerasimov (left) and A.N. Rogachev at work at the parking lot Kostenki 14 (Markina Gora), 1954 Photo archive of the MAE RAS |
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| Homo sapiens Location: Markina Gora (Kostenki XIV) |
The result of many years of research by Mikhail Gerasimov was the book "People of the Stone Age", illustrated by the author himself. At the international congress of the Association for the Study of the Quaternary Period in 1969 in Paris, an exhibition of the scientist's works was arranged, where 20 sculptural reconstructions of primitive people were demonstrated.
What kind of person was he? Unusually sociable, surprisingly attentive, very educated. You talk to him for ten minutes, and you have the impression that you know his years. Good father, good husband. All his life, Mikhail Mikhailovich dealt with the dead, but he retained both gaiety, enthusiasm, and extraordinary sociability. And that's okay. In Shakespeare, all the executioners are great jokers, and the gravediggers are wits. The thing is, you get used to everything. And besides, it must be said that when he dealt with the dead, they were no longer perceived by him as dead. Just stuff to work with, skulls, bones. But he also needed to study the heads of the dead in morgues, just as Michelangelo Buonarotti needed to dissect corpses in order to understand the structure of human muscles. Working with corpses, Gerasimov came to the conclusion that after death something changes in the tissues of the human body, and therefore, for control and clarification, he began to work on radiographs - additionally. He asked his doctor friends to give him such radiographs. One of them decided to play a joke and put his own in a pack of x-rays. Going through them, Gerasimov asked: “When did you shoot?” It was impossible to deceive him, he was incredibly observant...
The attractive force of the personality of Gerasimov the scientist, having captured a person once, never left. His students are still working in Irkutsk, who trained and sent more than 85 highly qualified archaeologists to universities, museums, and research institutes in Siberia - and this is a direct result of the work of Gerasimov the archaeologist.
Mikhail Gerasimov died in Moscow on July 21, 1970. In 1994, his daughters decided to arrange a small exhibition of their father's works, begged for some kind of little room in the house administration, like a red corner, and set up an exposition there; she lasted two months. Gerasimov's daughters made this exhibition on their own, with their own money, but how many people could see it in this “red corner”! Unfortunately, all interest in the author of extraordinary, talented works has been lost. But he was a completely unique person, and he lived to be only sixty-two years old.
Since the time of Gerasimov, the methods of reconstructing the face from the skull have not changed much. First, the skull itself is processed - if necessary, its physical damage is eliminated. Then it is outlined, measured in detail and described; if the skull is rare, a cast is taken from it. Then the gender and age of the object of reconstruction are determined. Age, as a rule, is determined by the degree of wear of the teeth and overgrowing of the sutures on the skull, and sex is determined by the degree of smoothness and development of the relief of the skull. Knowledge of age and gender is necessary to apply the appropriate value from the thickness scale developed from the study of the thickness of the soft tissues of the face. According to these values, the general profile of the face is determined and marked with special beacons. After that, the restorer begins to mold chewing and temporal muscles from hard plasticine, which determine the outline of the face, that is, its shape and proportions. The reference point in this case is the relief of the skull in the places of the beginning and attachment of the muscles. The next step is to apply a grid of ridges on the surface of the skull, which show the thickness of the tissues in each area of the face in accordance with the already mentioned thickness scale. The gaps between the ridges are filled and thus the surface of the face is formed. After that, you need to model the mouth and nose. These are the most difficult moments of reconstruction and the most vulnerable places in Gerasimov's position, which were most often criticized. He guessed that data on the structure of the mouth and nose could also be "read" from the skull, but he had a very rough idea about this. Gerasimov's student Galina Vyacheslavovna Lebedinskaya dealt with the problem of nose restoration a lot. With the help of radiographs, she was able to find out that the structure of the nose is determined by the edges of the pear-shaped opening of the skull, the bones located next to it, in particular, the lateral shift. The mouth is one big muscle, which, of course, disappears. Despite this, the outlines of the mouth can be determined by the place of its attachment to the skull, the width - by the structural features of the teeth and jaws, and the height of the painted part of the lips - by the height of the enamel of the incisors. The eyes are not only the mirror of the soul, but also very important detail the shape of a person. When they are restored, up to twenty-two features are used. Among them are the interocular distances, the structure of the nasal ossicles at the root of the nose, and the height, width and depth of the orbit, the structure of its edges. But the most difficult thing is with the ears. From the skull, you can determine the degree of their protrusion and the approximate size. The anthropologist gets the so-called "clean portrait". In the future, the resulting sculpture is “combed” and “dressed”. Gerasimov insisted that the anthropologist should be as impartial as possible, so the resulting face should be devoid of emotion. Today's anthropologists also work according to Gerasimov's method: they take a skull and cover it layer by layer with soft tissues, focusing on the relief of the bones. Some still do it by hand, but most prefer computer technology to create a spectacular 3D model.
Cleopatra
In the mass consciousness and cinema, Cleopatra is a beautiful woman. caucasian race. However, an Egyptologist from the University of Cambridge, Sally Ann Ashton, claims that by the time Cleopatra came to power, the Cleopatra family had lived in Egypt for 300 years, which means that Egyptian and Greek blood mixed in it and the skin tone was dark. Ashton created her image of Cleopatra in 2008 after a serious study that lasted more than a year. The basis for the three-dimensional reconstruction was the surviving ancient images of the Egyptian queen and the analysis of her genealogy. The image of a swarthy, friendly woman obtained using a computer does not fit in well with the image of the fatal beauty who was the beloved of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Nicholas the Wonderworker
Scottish anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, professor at the University of Dundee, recreated the appearance of St. Nicholas, who is revered in Russia as Nicholas the Wonderworker, and in the West is considered the prototype of Santa Claus.
The basis for 3D modeling was the results of a survey of the relics, which are stored in the Basilica of St. Nicholas in the Italian city of Bari. In 1953, Professor Luigi Martino, who was involved in the autopsy, took black and white photographs of the skull, as well as an X-ray of the skull in front and in profile. Features of the bones helped Wilkinson to restore the shape of the face, the teeth suggested the shape of the lips, and the eye sockets - the eyes. The details were completed by graphics specialists: they superimposed the skin structure on the 3D image, and also added wrinkles, hair and beard to the model.
However, not all Christians were satisfied with the results - many considered the image not as spiritual as they used to see the saint on the icon. Russian artists have created a more soulful image of Nicholas the Wonderworker, relying on the iconographic face of the saint and modern technologies.
Tutankhamen
In the fall of 2014, the world was struck by the publication of a three-dimensional image of Tutankhamun, created by a team of scientists who explored his tomb. The first full-length portrait of an Egyptian pharaoh is based on the analysis of the anatomical features of the mummy - in total, about 2000 scans of the surviving remains were made. The resulting image turned out to be surprisingly ugly and far from the majestic image that was captured in the funeral gold mask of the pharaoh, which is kept in the collection of the Cairo Museum. The computer-simulated Tutankhamun is depicted as a lame-legged, effeminate young man with protruding teeth, an overbite, wide hips and narrow shoulders.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare scholars still cannot agree on how the famous English playwright actually looked like: all the portraits and busts of the classic were made after his death. Many take a death mask found in 1849 in Germany as a genuine image of Shakespeare. German criminologists recently confirmed that it belongs to Shakespeare, as it matches other images, in particular with a bust placed on the playwright's grave by his relatives. It was this death mask that became the basis for the reconstruction of British specialists led by Stuart Clark: in 2010 they recreated a 3D model of Shakespeare's face specifically for the film "Death Masks" on the History Channel 13. However, Shakespeare scholars refused to recognize the results of the reconstruction as reliable, since they are not completely sure that the Darmstadt mask was really removed from Shakespeare's face.
Richard III
In 2012, the skeleton of the legendary English king Richard III, who died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, was found in a car park in Leicester - it was previously believed that his body was thrown into the Suar River and forever lost. This discovery was the beginning of a global study that included DNA analysis of the remains and living descendants of the king. One of the results was the reconstruction of the appearance of Richard III, which is especially important, since the lifetime images have not been preserved. The restoration of the appearance was carried out by the same researcher as in the case of St. Nicholas, Caroline Wilkinson: this time she started from the data of the genetic examination and the shape of the king's skull. The image turned out to be similar to portraits painted after the death of the monarch, including the earliest version - a portrait of Richard III from the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London, created in the 1520s.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Another work by Wilkinson is a reconstruction of the appearance of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. This work, made as a result of a thorough analysis of the remains of Bach in 2008, caused a lot of criticism, as the image turned out to be unlike the famous portraits and busts of the composer. However, the copy was exhibited at the Bach House Museum in the German city of Eisenach and recognized by a number of experts.
Dante
In 2007, researchers from the Universities of Bologna and Pisa restored the face of the author " Divine Comedy» Dante Alighieri. The portrait was based on detailed descriptions and a plaster cast made by the Italian anthropologist Fabio Frassetto during the last opening of the poet's grave in 1921. It was especially difficult to restore the shape of the chin, since the surviving skull of Dante did not have a jaw and scientists picked up a suitable one in the Frassetto collection, examining 90 skulls from the Museum of Anthropology. As a result newest Dante turned out to be more humane and softer than he is presented in posthumous images created according to the memoirs of his contemporaries. His characteristic aquiline nose has become noticeably shorter.
Robespierre
Perhaps the most expressive from a visual point of view is the work of the French studio Visualforensic. The image of the revolutionary Maximilian Robespierre is the result of a 3D reconstruction based on a death mask made by Madame Tussauds. The creation of the image involved not only specialists in computer graphics, but also anthropologists, and pathologists, and criminologists who investigate real crimes. Philippe Frosch, a French anthropologist and specialist in facial reconstruction, one of the creators of the portrait, commented on his work as follows: “There is no doubt that we see fear in his eyes. The high reliability and clarity of the reconstruction was made possible thanks to a 3D scanner. This is what allowed us to restore the details of the mask using the imaging method used by the FBI.”
Jesus Christ
The question of the appearance of Jesus Christ has been on the minds of people for 2,000 years. Since there are no real remains and DNA samples, anthropologists are looking for alternative ways to recreate his appearance. For example, forensic artist from the University of Manchester, Richard Neave, in the image of Christ was based on archaeological data and biblical sources. In the Gospel of Matthew, he found confirmation that the facial features of Jesus were characteristic of the Semites from Galilee at that time. Israeli archaeologists were able to provide Niv with several skulls of Jews - contemporaries of Christ, three of them underwent computed tomography. Based on this data, the researchers created a 3D digital reconstruction of the face and then a template of the skull. Neave analyzed all available descriptions of Jesus from biblical sources and first-century drawings found by archaeologists. So the questions about the color of the eyes, the length of the hair, the color of the skin, the height and physique of Christ were resolved. The portrait, modeled by programmers on the basis of Niva data in 2002, turned out to be strikingly different from famous images Jesus and caused indignation among believers. In response, Neave said that he had recreated only the appearance of an adult man who lived in the same place and at the same time as Jesus.
Another source for the reconstruction of the appearance of Christ is the Shroud of Turin. It is believed that this Christian relic, which is kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, captured the true face of the Savior. According to beliefs, it was in this cloth that the body of Jesus was wrapped after suffering torture and death. The first attempt to create a 3D reconstruction based on a shroud print was made by the American John Jackson in 1976: he analyzed the face on the canvas using a microdensitometer (a device that measures the degree of darkening of the image) and then reconstructed the three-dimensional shape of the body using computer programs for processing aerial photographs .
In 2010, they tried to recreate the image of Christ from the shroud american artists from Studio Macbeth for The History Channel documentary The Real Face of Jesus. Using modern 3D technologies, specialists led by Ray Downing transformed the image obtained from the shroud from two-dimensional to three-dimensional. As a result, Jesus Downing turned out to be swarthy, dark-haired, well-built, about 1.72 cm tall. Prior to this, Jesus was represented as fair-skinned, thin, fair-haired. It also turned out to be unlike the canonical images of Christ. This became a reason for the indignation of many, as well as the very fact that an imprint from the Shroud of Turin was used for reconstruction, the authenticity of which many doubt. Downing, however, has no doubt that he created "the most accurate image of the face of Jesus."
By the way, it should be noted that some esotericists, as well as people who go in their subconscious to the distant past under hypnosis (to their previous incarnations), described Jesus Christ in approximately the same way - stocky, swarthy and with black stiff curls, however, with more enlightened, spiritual face than it turned out in modern computer scientists.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Gerasimov was born in St. Petersburg, but soon moved to Irkutsk with his parents. At the age of 11 he participated in archaeological excavations for the first time in his life, at 18 he published his first scientific article. With anatomy, as well as archeology, Gerasimov met very early.
He gradually accumulated anatomical knowledge and in 1927 made the first reconstructions from the skulls of Pithecanthropus and Neanderthals. He apparently did not know about the skepticism of most scientists towards the methods of reconstructing the face from the skull, and therefore he worked with enthusiasm.
But the first large-scale experiment to test the method created by Gerasimov was carried out only in 1940–1941. The scientist (by this time he lived again in St. Petersburg) received from Moscow a parcel with the skull of the deceased, whose photographs were kept in a safe in Moscow. Of course, Gerasimov had not seen either the man himself or his image before. In total, twelve reconstructions were carried out on the skulls of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and Chinese. A special commission, consisting of scientists and criminologists, evaluated the results of the work. There were no methods to establish the identity of the face at that time, so the reconstructions were evaluated “by eye”. In all twelve cases, a portrait resemblance was stated.
Who is the last to the anthropologist?
In the summer of 1941, Gerasimov participated in an expedition to the tomb of Timur Tamerlane (1336–1405) and the Timurids in Gur-Emir. The expedition confirmed the legend of Timur's lameness, and Gerasimov worked with the commander's skull. The reconstruction of Timur's face, which Gerasimov performed, already being a recognized scientist, was not his first. historical work. Before that, he had already restored the faces of Yaroslav the Wise (c. 978–1054) and Andrei Bogolyubsky (c. 1111–1174). Among his subsequent works are busts of the German poet Schiller (Friedrich Schiller, 1759–1805) and the Persian Rudaki (c. 860–941), the leader of the highlanders Hadji Murad (late 1790s - 1852) and the Russian admiral, later canonized, Fyodor Ushakov ( 1745–1817). In 1950, the Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction was opened at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now) and Gerasimov remained its head until his death.
The most mature and famous work of the anthropologist is the reconstruction of the face of Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584), carried out in 1964. In preparation for such a responsible task, the anthropologist basically did not collect data on the appearance of Ivan IV, so as not to experience their pressure in the process of work. Even modern scientists note that the resulting image of a courageous and strong-willed ruler is most likely as close as possible to the real one. Gerasimov never reconstructed historical figures according to own initiative, since he considered himself, first of all, a specialist in the Paleolithic. He always liked working with the skulls of Stone Age people or ancestors, although reliable data on the structure of their soft tissues of the head cannot be obtained to this day.
I sculpt from plasticine ...
Since the time of Gerasimov, the methods of reconstructing the face from the skull have not changed much. First, the skull itself is processed - if necessary, its physical damage is eliminated. Then it is outlined, measured in detail and described; if the skull is rare, a cast is taken from it. Then the gender and age of the object of reconstruction are determined. Age, as a rule, is determined by the degree of wear of the teeth and overgrowing of the sutures on the skull, and sex is determined by the degree of smoothness and development of the relief of the skull.
Knowledge of age and gender is necessary to apply the appropriate value from the thickness scale developed from the study of the thickness of the soft tissues of the face. According to these values, the general profile of the face is determined and marked with special beacons. After that, the restorer begins to mold chewing and temporal muscles from hard plasticine, which determine the outline of the face, that is, its shape and proportions. The reference point in this case is the relief of the skull in the places of the beginning and attachment of the muscles. The next step is to apply a grid of ridges on the surface of the skull, which show the thickness of the tissues in each area of the face in accordance with the already mentioned thickness scale. The gaps between the ridges are filled and thus the surface of the face is formed.
After that, you need to model the mouth and nose. These are the most difficult moments of reconstruction and the most vulnerable places in Gerasimov's position, which were most often criticized. He guessed that data on the structure of the mouth and nose could also be "read" from the skull, but he had a very rough idea about this. Gerasimov's student Galina Vyacheslavovna Lebedinskaya was very much involved in the problem of nose restoration. With the help of radiographs, she was able to find out that the structure of the nose is determined by the edges of the pear-shaped opening of the skull, the bones located next to it, in particular, the lateral shift. The mouth is one big muscle, which, of course, disappears. Despite this, the outlines of the mouth can be determined by the place of its attachment to the skull, the width - by the structural features of the teeth and jaws, and the height of the painted part of the lips - by the height of the enamel of the incisors.
Eyes are not only a mirror of the soul, but also a very important detail of a person's appearance. When they are restored, up to twenty-two features are used. Among them are the interocular distances, the structure of the nasal ossicles at the root of the nose, and the height, width and depth of the orbit, the structure of its edges. But the most difficult thing is with the ears. From the skull, you can determine the degree of their protrusion and the approximate size. The anthropologist gets the so-called "clean portrait". In the future, the resulting sculpture is “combed” and “dressed”. Gerasimov insisted that the anthropologist should be as impartial as possible, so the resulting face should be devoid of emotion.
Hi-Tech for the skull
For a long time, the thickness scale was determined largely on cadaveric material. This was the source of many errors: after all, within a few hours after death, the soft tissues of the head begin to deform and shift relative to the bone base. However, in the 1970s, specialists from the Anthropological Reconstruction Laboratory first applied the location method using ultrasound. Reflection of a directed beam of ultrasonic rays allows you to most accurately determine the thickness of soft tissues in the most "informative" points of the face. In 1988-1992, the laboratory carried out large-scale studies throughout the USSR, which made it possible to create the most complete database on the thickness of the soft tissues of the face to date.
The tables used by scientists in Europe are much poorer. In addition, the process of reconstruction there is excessively computerized. A scientist, as a rule, does not deal with the skull itself, but with its image - a digital model obtained as a result of scanning. The tissue extension on the face is carried out purely virtually. The current head of the Anthropological Reconstruction Laboratory, Tatyana Baluyeva, believes that this harms the result. In her opinion, there is no computer program capable of fully reflecting the entire individuality of each skull. In addition, individual nuances of the work could not be formalized; an anthropologist's intuition is required.
Polovtsian from Kvashnikovo. XII - XIII centuries.
Reconstruction by G.V. Lebedinskaya, established in 1989.
The Polovtsians (Kumans) are a Turkic-speaking group of steppe nomads, known from the 11th to the 13th centuries. Their original homeland is the steppes between the Ob and Irtysh rivers. By the middle of the 11th century, they conquered almost the entire territory of modern Kazakhstan, crossed the Volga and appeared in the southern Russian steppes, pushing back the Pechenegs. The Polovtsy repeatedly attacked the Russian lands, but sometimes acted as allies of the Russian princes. In 1223, during the first Tatar-Mongol raid, they defended themselves along with the Russians on the Kalka River and were defeated. As a result Tatar-Mongol conquest part of the Polovtsians joined the Golden Horde, and the other part moved to Hungary.
The burial near the village of Kvashnikovo (Saratov region) was discovered by chance, during the erosion of a ravine. The excavations were carried out in 1959 by the staff of the Saratov Museum of Local Lore. The grave contained the skeleton of a man buried with a horse. An iron helmet, topped with a bronze sheet, has been preserved. The top of the helmet was decorated with gilded bronze plates, forming a rosette, in the center of which there was a hole from a small rod that had once been here. The remnants of chain mail found together with the helmet are very close to ancient Russian items of this kind. Other items (stirrups, bits, buckles, saddle lining) are typical of late burials of the steppe nomads of the lower Volga region and the European southeast. They make it possible to date the burial to the 12th-13th century. In the restored face of this man, a combination of Caucasoid (medium-wide face, strongly protruding straight nose with a small hump) and Mongoloid (flattened upper face, high cheekbones, slightly swollen fold of the upper eyelid) features are noticeable. Such a mestizo anthropological type is characteristic of many peoples of southern Siberia and Altai.
Rudaki is a Tajik poet. X century.
Reconstruction by M.M. Gerasimov, established in 1957.
Abu Abdullo Jafar Rudaki (mid-860s - 941) - the founder of classical Tajik-Persian poetry. Born in the village of Panjrud. According to legend, he was blind from birth. He became famous as a singer, musician and poet. He was close to the court of the rulers of Bukhara, but by the end of his life he fell into disgrace and died in poverty in his homeland. Only a small part of his poems has come down to us.
In 1956 M.M. Gerasimov was offered to find a grave and create a sculptural portrait of Rudaki. There was practically no information about the life of the poet, and Gerasimov decided to study his poems as a biographical source. An analysis of the early poems showed that they contain many colorful descriptions, while the later ones lack visual images. So he's already blind adulthood. In the "Ode on Old Age" there are the words: "All my teeth crumbled and fell out." Gerasimov formulated ten conditions, under the coincidence of which the remains could be considered as belonging to the poet. Then he went to the village of Panjrud, where he found the remains of a mazar and a grave with a male skeleton in the old cemetery. Everything indicated that this was indeed Rudaki's grave. The skull was without teeth. The skeleton belonged to a man 75-78 years old. Judging by the shape of the cervical vertebrae, he kept his head thrown back, as the blind walk. Examination of the eye sockets revealed atrophy of their upper edge and ophthalmic nerve, but the eyeball was not destroyed. This suggests that he was blinded around the age of 60. Traces of healed rib fractures were found on the skeleton.
During the reconstruction, the scientist recreated the upper part of the torso. According to the anthropological type, this is a Caucasoid, typical representative mountain Tajiks. To show the absence of teeth, he is shown as if pronouncing a guttural sound. Old people in the mountain villages do not cut their beards, so he was given a rather long and thick beard. He is dressed in a simple shirt and a coarse woolen robe, as he spent the last years of his life in poverty. As a visitor to Mecca, Rudaki had the right to wear a turban.
Skilur is the king of the Scythians. 2nd century BC
Reconstruction by M.M. Gerasimov, established in 1946.
The Scythians are steppe nomads, known since the 7th century. BC. according to the IV century. AD and occupying the territory from Central Asia to the Danube. The center of the Scythian state was the Black Sea steppes, where the "royal Scythians" lived, known for rich burials in barrows with horses, weapons and a lot of gold and silver jewelry in a special "animal" style. At the end of the III century BC. Under the onslaught of the Sarmatians, the Scythians retreated to the Crimea, where, not far from Simferopol, they founded a new capital - the Scythian Neapolis. The Scythian kingdom in the Crimea reached its peak in the II-I centuries BC.
During excavations in the Scythian Neapolis, the base of the tower was discovered, which served as a mausoleum for the burial places of the Scythian nobility. Among them stood out a tomb made of white limestone slabs, which contained the richest and oldest burial. Together with the skeleton of a man, over eight hundred gold jewelry and expensive weapons were found there - two swords with gold and silver handles and a bronze helmet with silver inlay. At the hip was a quiver, decorated with gold plates. It was clear that this was the burial of a noble Scythian, possibly a king. It dates back to the 2nd century BC.
The study of the remains showed that they belonged to a strong, robust man of the Caucasoid anthropological type. The skull is long, massive, with an artificial deformation of the vault. The face is beautiful, with regular features. The nose is strongly protruding, narrow, with a small hump. The age of the deceased is no more than 40-45 years.
And here is Skilur with his son Palak on the relief
When, in order to give greater credibility to the reconstruction of an unknown warrior, he was given a Scythian hairstyle with long hair and a beard, then a clear portrait resemblance to the king Skilur depicted on coins and bas-reliefs was revealed. The images clearly show the characteristic deformity of the head. The royal Scythians bandaged the head of babies so that it acquired an elongated, "aristocratic" shape. According to historical information, Skilur died in a battle with the troops of King Mithridates of Pontus.
Sarmatian from the Staro-Lybaevsky burial ground.
Reconstruction by T.S. Balueva, established in 2000.
The Sarmatians are an Iranian-speaking group of steppe nomads, known since the 7th century BC. to the 4th century AD, related to the Scythians of the Black Sea region and the Saks of Central Asia. Their ancestral home is the southern Urals and western Kazakhstan. At the turn of the III and II centuries BC. The Sarmatians defeated the Scythians and advanced west, occupying the territory from the Tobol to the Danube. The monuments of the Sarmatian culture are burial mounds with rich grave goods. Some of them are in no way inferior to the Scythian ones in their grandeur and richness. The bronze and gold ornaments found in them are made in the Scythian-Sarmatian "animal" style. The Sarmatians retained elements of matriarchy for a long time. Women participated in military campaigns and often occupied a dominant position in society. Rich burials of female leaders in full military armament are known.
The burial mound Staro-Lybaevsky is located in the forest-steppe, 75 km south of Tyumen (Western Siberia). The excavations were carried out in 1998-2001 by archaeologists from the Institute of Problems of the Development of the North of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The mounds have a diameter of up to 30 m. In addition to single burials, collective burials of men and women with military weapons were found in them. Skeletons of horses and fragments of horse harness were found near the burial mounds of people. Many graves were plundered in antiquity.
The reconstruction of a 30-40-year-old man was made from the remains from the burial in mound No. 33. His anthropological type is Caucasoid, with a possible slight Mongoloid admixture, short-headed and broad-faced, with a slightly flattened face, but with a high bridge of nose and a strongly protruding nose.
In the grave were found horn overlays for a bow, a quiver, arrows with bone and iron tips, fragments of an iron dagger. Undoubtedly, the buried was a warrior. Therefore, in the reconstruction, he is shown wearing a leather helmet and a shell made of bone plates, fragments of which were found in a burial from a nearby mound. Burial time - I century AD.
Timur (Tamerlane) is a medieval conqueror. XIV century.
Reconstruction by M.M. Gerasimov, established in 1941.
Timur (1336 - 1405) - an outstanding commander and conqueror, the creator of a huge state with its capital in Samarkand. Descended from the Turkic-Mongolian family Barlasov. As a result of the conquests, middle Asia, Transcaucasia, Persia and Punjab. He made military campaigns in India, Turkey, Mesopotamia, Egypt, defeated the Golden Horde. Died while on a trip to China. His remains are buried in Samarkand in the Gur-Emir mausoleum - a wonderful monument of medieval architecture. In addition to Timur, two of his sons, Shahrukh and Mironshah, and two grandsons, Mukhamad-Sultan and Ulugbek, are buried there.
In June 1941, the tomb of the Timurids was opened. Timur's tomb was in the center. The remains found there belonged to a man of strong build and tall for a Mongol growth. Pathological changes in the elbow and knee joints were found on the skeleton. Remains of red hair with graying have been preserved on the skull. This confirms that the remains belong to Timur. According to his contemporaries, he was red-bearded, tall and very strong. After being wounded, he became lame on his right leg and withered hands. His nickname Timur-leng (Tamerlane) is translated as "lame Timur". He walked with a strong crouch, but was a tireless rider. Right hand stopped bending at the elbow, but remained strong and mobile in the shoulder. This allowed Timur to master the saber perfectly. According to the anthropological type, he was a typical Mongol, with a big cheekbones, inactive face. The left shoulder was noticeably higher than the right, but this did not affect the proud landing of the head. The remnants of the hair made it possible to restore the shape of the eyebrows, mustache and beard. He had a long, mongolian downturned chestnut mustache. A small beard of red color with gray hair was wedge-shaped. Although Timur died at the age of seventy, he was a man full of strength and energy. The costume and headdress were created on the basis of the analysis of miniatures and things of the Timurid era.
Kushan queen. Reconstruction by T.S. Baluyeva,
established in 1986.
In 1978, during the excavation of an ancient burial ground on the hill of Tillya-Tepe (“Golden Hill”) in Northern Afghanistan, six rich, possibly royal burials were found. In this territory, after the collapse of the vast empire of Alexander the Great in the 3rd century BC. Greco-Bactrian state arose. In the 1st century BC. it was conquered by the steppe nomads-Kushans. The nomads, moving to a settled way of life, adopted many elements of the Bactrian culture and created the vast Kushan kingdom, which existed for about five hundred years. Twenty thousand gold coins were found in the graves. jewelry. Among them are imported things from Greece, Rome, India, China and decorations of local Bactrian masters. In one of the six burials of the Tillya-Tepe necropolis, a woman was buried in a wooden coffin, buried with unusual splendor. Her belonging to the ruling elite is evidenced by a golden openwork crown, decorated with pearls and turquoise, and a golden scepter. Gold-woven burial robes had a magnificent finish. The long dress was embroidered with pearls and hundreds of gold plaques encrusted with gems. The dress was decorated with a golden figurine of a winged goddess, reminiscent of the Greek Aphrodite. Over the dress, the deceased was wearing a long robe with gold clasps. Openwork gold pendants were decorated with the image of the oriental goddess of wildlife. Two mirrors and a wicker basket with perfumery and cosmetic accessories were found next to the buried woman. A silver coin was clutched in his hand, and a gold one behind his cheek, symbolizing the payment to Charon for crossing to the kingdom of the dead. This is in line with ancient Greek funeral rites. This woman undoubtedly occupied the top step in that stratum of newcomers-nomads, which at the turn of our era began to rule Bactria. In the reconstruction, she is shown without a golden crown and almost without decorations. Her skull has a characteristic deformity that gives her head an elongated shape.
Khan Mahmud (early 1420s - early 1460s).
Reconstruction by T.S. Baluyeva, created in 1994.
Khan Mahmud (early 1420s - early 1460s) came from a dynasty of direct descendants of Genghis Khan. His father, Khan of the Golden Horde Olug-Mukhammed, did not rule for long, was overthrown and fled. In 1439, Olug-Muhammed raided Moscow, but the Muscovites withstood the siege and fought back. Mahmud also participated in this campaign as a young man. In the summer of 1445, the Horde under the command of the sons of Olug-Muhammed Mahmud and Yakub defeated the army of Grand Duke Vasily II near Suzdal, captured him himself and released him only after paying a ransom. In the same autumn, Mahmud captured the city of Kazan, the capital of the Volga Bulgaria, and founded the Kazan Khanate. Fearing his relatives who fought for power in the Golden Horde, Mahmud restored peaceful relations with the Moscow state. The dates of his life are unknown, but according to chronicles, he died in the early 1460s at the age of about 40 years.
In 1977, during excavations in the Kazan Kremlin, the foundations of two white-stone mausoleums with the remains of rich burials were discovered. They were located on the territory of the khan's residence and most likely were the tombs of the khans and their families. In one of them, dating back to the 15th century, there was a burial of a man aged 35-40. The deceased was a pronounced representative of the Central Asian variant of the Mongoloid anthropological type. Face with massive cheekbones, narrow slit eyes with an overhanging fold of the eyelid, straight, slightly protruding nose. Structural features of the bones of the arms and the occipital part of the skull indicate prolonged physical exertion that occurs when riding: a straightened back with shoulders laid back and a slightly tilted head. A number of signs speak of seasonality in the diet, characteristic of nomadic life. A thorough analysis led to the conclusion that the buried is the founder of the Kazan Khanate, Khan Mahmud.
Mohammed-Emin - Kazan Khan. XVI century.
Reconstruction by T.S. Baluyeva, created in 1995.
Muhammad-Emin (1468 - 1518) - the grandson of Khan Mahmud, the son of Khan Ibrahim and Princess Nur-Soltan. After the death of his father, his elder brother Ilgam became Khan, and the ten-year-old Mohammed-Emin was sent to Moscow, where he was brought up at the court of Grand Duke Ivan III. In 1487, as a result of a military campaign of Russian troops and the establishment of a Moscow protectorate over the Kazan Khanate, he was placed on the throne. According to the chronicles, during his reign from 1487 to 1496, he proved himself to be "a true friend of Russia." He is known not only as a politician and ruler of Kazan, but also as a wonderful poet, whose works have been preserved in fragments to this day. He was overthrown by Khan Mamuk from the Sheibanid dynasty. In 1502, he was again placed on the throne by Moscow governors and reigned until his death in 1518. According to chronicle sources, in the last years of his life he was seriously ill, died at the age of fifty and was buried "in the Bulgarian city of Kazan."
The skeleton of a man from the second mausoleum in the Kazan Kremlin, the beginning of the 16th century, belongs to a man 45-50 years old, which corresponds to the age of Mohammed-Emin. Examination of the skeleton showed that he had osteochondrosis of the thoracic spine, this disease caused acute pain when moving. Changes in the shape of the back of the head and other bones were revealed, indicating the long-term loads of a professional rider. According to anthropological features, it belongs to the Central Asian variant of the Mongoloid type. Attention is drawn to the great individual similarity between those buried in two mausoleums, Muhammad-Emin and Mahmud. This is quite natural, since they are relatives. They were Mongols, direct descendants of Genghis Khan, and in appearance they differed sharply from the rest of the population of the Volga Bulgaria and the Kazan Khanate that arose on its territory. The local population had a Caucasoid appearance with a small Mongoloid admixture.
Reconstruction of the appearance of the ancient peoples of Siberia and Kazakhstan
Throughout the history of mankind, at different times, the composition of the population of various territories has changed, migrations during which the newcomer population mixed with the earlier one or displaced it, led to changes in the anthropological type, changed the appearance of man and adaptation to natural conditions. In the article of the employees of the "Gerasimov" laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction of the IEA RAS, the change over several thousand years of the anthropological type of the population of two territories - the steppes of Kazakhstan, the Urals - is studied. Southern Siberia, on the one hand, and the coast of Chukotka, on the other, numerous sculptural reconstructions illustrate both the gradual growth of the Mongoloid racial component in the population of Kazakhstan, and much smaller, rather, as a result of adaptation to the natural environment, changes in the anthropological type of the population of the Chukchi coast. The work was first published in the final volume of the program of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences "Adaptation of peoples and cultures to changes natural environment, Social and Technogenic Transformations" published in 2009 by the ROSSPEN publishing house under the heading of IEA RAS.
Balueva T. S., Veselovskaya E. V., Grigorieva O. M., Pestryakov A. P.
FORMATION AND DYNAMICS OF THE POPULATION OF SIBERIA AND KAZAKHSTAN
Rice. 1. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the Koskuduk burial ground, Western Kazakhstan (Eneolithic, 2nd half of 4th millennium BC)
Rice. 2. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the Protoka burial ground, South Western Siberia(Neolithic)
Reconstruction author: T.S.Baluyeva
Rice. 3. Sculptural reconstruction of the skull of a man from the Gumarovskie burial mounds, Southern Urals, (Scythian period. 7th century BC)
Reconstruction author: T.S.Baluyeva
Rice. 4. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the Chilikty burial ground, East Kazakhstan (Saki, 6th-5th century BC)
The authors of the reconstruction: T.S.Baluyeva, E.V. Veselovskaya
Rice. 5. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the Berel burial ground, North-Eastern Kazakhstan (Scythian time: 7-3 centuries BC)
Author of the reconstruction: E.V. Veselovskaya
Rice. 6. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the Filippovskiy barrows, Southern Urals (Sarmatians, 5-4 centuries BC)
Reconstruction author: T.S.Baluyeva
Paleoreconstruction Experience
The first experience of such a paleoreconstruction was carried out on a control craniological sample of representatives of the Arctic race from the territory Far East turn of our era (Ekven burial ground). The sample consisted of male and female skulls. For each skull, an individual verbal portrait was compiled using the craniofacial correspondence method and graphic reconstructions were made. Based on generalized verbal portraits and average dimensional characteristics obtained in the course of paleoreconstruction, a comparison was made of the reconstructed population with the modern Eskimo population of the same territory in terms of anthropometry and anthroposcopy of a living face. The chronological variability of the physical appearance is traced on the basis of the study of the genealogical continuity of the studied groups.
Rice. 7. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from the Ekven burial ground, Chukotka (ancient Eskimos, late 1000 BC - early 1000 AD)
Reconstruction author: T.S.Baluyeva
The population that left the Ekvensky burial ground had sufficient uniformity in the shape of the head as a whole and in the structure of individual elements of the face. Many of these features are typical of the Eskimos (Fig. 7). These include the keeled shape of the head; tall, pentagonoid in full face, fairly wide face; weak horizontal profiling of the face, long and narrow nose, noticeable prognathism, low and narrow forehead; large zygomatic and mandibular diameters. The complex of these features is perhaps the most stable over time and can be traced to the present day.
In general, modern Eskimos are more graceful than the ancient Eskimos of the Ekvensky burial ground. The analysis reveals that the differences in many dimensional characteristics are not accidental. For example, a significant shift in the size of the nose should be noted. In modern Eskimos, the nose has become wider. At the same time, the morphological height of the face remained the same. Thus, there was a change in the distribution of the height of the face over the floors. In the harsh conditions of the North, any change goes through a strict selection. Correlations of the nasal index with the average annual air temperature and air humidity are known, i.e., the dimensions of the nose reflect adaptation to climate conditions.
Interestingly, most of the racial diagnostic characteristics have not changed over the past two millennia. It can be assumed that by the time when the Ekvensky burial ground was formed, a stable complex of traits distinguishing this group had already formed and consolidated in the genotype. By choosing the most favorable places for hunting, the ancient populations provided themselves with a long stable existence in one territory. Due to the specifics of the sea hunter hunt, Eskimo settlements have existed for many centuries. And as a result of this, it is impossible to exclude the influence of adaptive processes on the formation of the modern anthropological type of the Eskimos.
Rice. 9. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from the Filippovsky burial mounds, Southern Urals (Sarmatians, 5-4 centuries BC)
Reconstruction author: T.S.Baluyeva
The reasons for the epochal variability lie in strong mixing with the coastal Chukchi, without excluding the influence of adaptation. Historical data indicate that the Chukchi largely adopted their culture and culture from the Eskimos. long time existed in overlapping areas.
Rice. 10. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from the Isakovka burial ground, South of Western Siberia (Sargat culture, 3-4 century AD)
Reconstruction author: T.S.Baluyeva
The analysis of variability was based on craniological materials from a large number of cemeteries from the study area. A list of them is given below.
Neolithic: burial grounds of Koskuduk (Western Kazakhstan); Protoka and Sopka (south of Western Siberia).
Bronze: Ikpen-I (Fedorov k-ra, XV-XIV centuries BC, Kazakhstan), Kara-Tumsuk (Alakul k-ra, Kazakhstan XV century BC).
Rice. eleven.
Early iron: (Scythian time) (VII-III centuries BC). Burial grounds: Gumarovsky ( Southern Urals), Akalakh, Berel, Tar-Asu (Pazyryk mounds of Altai), Mayemer (Western Kazakhstan), Kudaikol-1 (Tasmolinskaya k-ra, VII-III centuries BC, Pavlodar region, North-Eastern Kazakhstan), Kegen (VII century BC - III century AD, South Kazakhstan), Maibulak (Saki, VII-III centuries AD, Kazakhstan). Hunno-Sarmatian time (the last centuries BC - the first centuries AD), cemeteries: Filippovsky mounds (Southern Urals), Isakovka, Kokonovka, Strizhevo (Omsk Irtysh region, III-IV centuries, Sargat culture), Starolybaevsky (Tyumenskaya region), Altyn-Asar (Aral region), Tompak-Asar (Aral region), Lebedevka (V century BC, Kazakhstan, Ural region), Sarlytam (Western Kazakhstan, Mangyshlak), Sary-Kamys (Western Kazakhstan ), Tanabergen-II (Sauromatian region, VII-III centuries, Western Kazakhstan), Ilekshar (Sarmatians, II century BC and Sauromatians, VII-III centuries, Aktobe region, Western Kazakhstan; Teren (sanctuary) (III century BC, Western Kazakhstan, Mangistau region), Dikiltas (Aktobe region, Western Kazakhstan), Kegen (III-VI centuries AD, Southern Kazakhstan), Karaagash (Xiongnu , Central Kazakhstan, III-VI centuries), Bien-I (Usun, II century BC - IV century AD, Kazakhstan).
Rice. 12. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from the Altyn-Asar burial ground, Aral Sea region (late 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD)
Reconstruction author: O.M. Grigorieva
Early Middle Ages (Turkic time). Burial grounds: Kokmardan (Kangyuy, II century BC - VIII century AD, South Kazakhstan), Borizhar (Turks, V-VIII centuries, Chimkent region, South Kazakhstan), Birsky (Bakhmutinskaya k- ra, VII-VIII centuries AD, North-Western Bashkiria).
Developed Middle Ages. Burial grounds: Sawmill (Kimak time, IX-XI centuries, Northern Kazakhstan),
Rice. 13. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from the Sary-Kamys burial ground, Western Kazakhstan (Hunnic time: 3-5 centuries AD)
The author of the reconstruction: E.V. Veselovskaya
Talgar (XI-XII centuries, Karluks, Taldy-Kurgan region, East Kazakhstan), Kopa (Kipchaks, XII-XIII centuries AD, Kazakhstan), Baganaty (Kipchaks, Petropavlovsk region, XII-XIII centuries. AD, Kazakhstan), Baikar (Mongols, XIII century, Northern Kazakhstan, Petropavlovsk region), Sarai-Berke (Golden Horde), Zhaman-Kargala-I (Golden Horde, XII-XIV centuries, Western Kazakhstan, Aktobe region), Sandy Island (Golden Horde, late XIV - early XV centuries AD, Kazan).
Rice. 14. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the Karakystak burial ground, Western Kazakhstan (Turkic time: 5-8 centuries AD)The author of the reconstruction: T.S. Balueva, E.V. Veselovskaya
Based on the comprehensive analysis of the entire material, including the study of the variability of the growth processes of the skull, the following conclusions can be drawn in geographical and chronological aspects. In the Neolithic on the territory of Siberia and Kazakhstan, the population was characterized by relative heterogeneity within a large Caucasoid trunk. The anthropological complexes characteristic of the modern population of Siberia and Kazakhstan have not yet formed (the Protoka, Sopka, and Koskuduk burial grounds) (Fig. 1, 2).
In all subsequent chronological periods studied in the steppe region, the nomadic pastoralists dominated in economic terms, whose representatives are characterized exclusively by Caucasoid racial features with significant vertical and horizontal profiling (Gumarovskie kurgans, Akalakh, Sopka, Mayemer, etc.) (Fig. 3) ). In the southeastern part of Kazakhstan, a significant admixture of the gracile Mediterranean type is recorded, for example, materials from the burial grounds of Kudaikol-I and Kegen, Chilikty (Fig. 4). Only in some of the most eastern regions of the region under study, a small Mongoloid admixture is recorded among the population.
Rice. 15. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a woman from the Bozok burial ground, Northern Kazakhstan (Turkic time: 5-8 centuries AD)
In the north-east of Kazakhstan, the predominant component of the anthropological appearance is a morphotype with a mixed expression of Caucasoid and Mongoloid features, determined by a combination of a large height and width of the face with a strong protrusion of the nose (burial grounds of Berel, Tar-Asu, Kyrgauldy, etc.) (Fig. 5 ).
The population of the Sarmatian and Hunnic times (the last centuries BC - the first centuries AD) is also distinguished by a decisive predominance of the Caucasoid anthropological type with a specific morphological complex, characterized by a maturized, wide and somewhat flattened face, a protruding nose, mesobrachycrania, relatively low-arched, a skull with a large absolute size (monuments Filippovskiye mounds, Altyn-Asar, Starolybaevsky, Isakovka, Kokonovka, Lebedevka, etc.) (Fig. 6.9-10). In the same Hunno-Sarmatian time, the custom of artificial deformation of the skull was recorded to a noticeable extent (the burial grounds of Tompak-Asar, Altyn-Asar, etc.) (Fig. 11, 12), giving the appearance a unique originality.
In the Hunnic time, populations with noticeable Mongoloid racial features seep into the territory of Kazakhstan - a more flattened face, a less protruding nose, a developed fold of the upper eyelid (Sarlytam, Tanabergen, Dikiltas, Strizhevo, Sary-Kamys, Kegen burial grounds) (Fig. 13).
Rice. 16. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of the Kazakh biy Aiteke Bi Baibekuly
The authors of the reconstruction: T.S. Balueva, E.V. Veselovskaya
The early Middle Ages is characterized by the appearance and spread of the ancient Turks in the study area (Kongyuy, Borizhar, Bien, Karakystak, etc.) (Fig. 14). And at this time, Caucasoids also predominate in the steppe, but some Mongoloid features already clearly appear. For example, the population that left the Lesozavod burial ground in Central Kazakhstan (Kimak time - IX-XI centuries) is characterized by large sizes skulls with low height, very wide and high face with its rather strong flattening in the nasomalar region. The population that left the burial grounds of Talgar, Bozok, and some others (Eastern Kazakhstan) had similar features (Fig. 15).
The population looked completely different in late middle ages. It acquires a stable Caucasoid-Mongoloid appearance with a slightly profiled face and a rather pronounced development of the upper eyelid fold (Fig. 16).
Rice. 17. Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of the Kazakh batyr Kobylandy
The authors of the reconstruction: T.S. Balueva, E.V. Veselovskaya
In general, the population of the studied chronological period from the Neolithic to developed middle ages characterized by the steady growth of the Mongoloid racial component against the background of a population that is generally Caucasoid in appearance. As a result, the main part of the population acquires the appearance of the Ural and South Siberian contact, Caucasoid-Mongoloid race (Podchegan, Talgar, Baganaty, Shiderty, Kopa, Zhaman-Kargala, etc.) (Fig. 17).
The original methods used made it possible to obtain new specific characteristics of the studied populations, which cannot be obtained using traditional anthropological studies. A new gallery of graphic and sculptural portraits was also created, illustrating the change of anthropological types in space and time.
We bring to your attention a selection of classical reconstructions made in the famous Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (we are talking about the same laboratory organized by M.M. Gerasimov in 1950). The level of these works is still a benchmark. The photographs were kindly provided by the head of the laboratory, Tatyana Sergeevna Baluyeva, especially for the Anthropogenesis.RU portal.
"However, it should be noted that we deliberately avoid depicting any emotions in the reconstructions; we reproduce only what we can see on the skull. You can get so carried away with" creating an image " that the physical features of the face will simply be lost, i.e. artists deliberately " distort" - increasing or decreasing - this or that facial feature for greater expressiveness. For us, each skull is strictly individual, and the technique for reproducing appearance features on bone structures is accurate and verified to the smallest detail ... We are not artists, the result of our work, sculptural or graphic portrait, is not a work of art. That is why the restoration of the face from the skull is widely used in judicial practice "... (From an article by T.S. Baluyeva).
Australopithecus afarensis
Location: Hadar
Skeleton: AL 288-1 "Lucy"
Dating: 3.2 million years. n. 
Australopithecus afarensis
Location: Hadar
Skull: AL 444-2 + mandible AL 444-2b
Dating: 3.0 million years. n.
Authors: T.S. Balueva, E.V. Veselovskaya
(photos 1 and 2 - reconstruction without hairline;
published for the first time).
Australopithecus africanus
Location: Sterkfontein
Skull: Plesianthropus 5
Dating: 2.5 million years. n.
Homo habilis
Location: Olduvai
Skull: OH 24
Dating: 1.8 million years. n.
Homo rudolfensis
Location: Koobi Fora
Skull: KNM-ER 1470
Dating: 2.03 million years. n.
Photo published for the first time
Homo ergaster
Location: Koobi Fora
Skull: KNM ER 3733
Dating: 1.7 million years. n. 
Homo erectus
Location: Sangiran
Skull: Sangiran 17
Dating: 1 million years. n. 
Sinanthropus / Homo erectus
Location: Zhoukoudian (China)
Dating: 400 thousand liters. n. 
Homo heidelbergensis
Location: Broken Hill (Kabwe)
Skull: Broken Hill 1
Dating: 130-300 thousand years ago n. 
Homo heidelbergensis (female)
