I am a young sculptor and I find human anatomy to be very hard to get perfect but John Gurch did it perfectly. I would love to learn from someone like that with all the capabilities of making a strange human being. It looks like he literally had a time machine. Only if he had been a costume diredtor for the Planet of the Apes movies. I've never seen a more realistic looking peace of art, only if I could go to the Smithsonian and see it for real, in person. John Gurche, I truelly want to know how you do it!

The morphology and appearance of early humans must have been as varied as were the environments and climates in which they lived and reproduced. Natural selection came in the form of environmental contrition and cultural adaptations that insured able bodied progeny. The diversity in the monkey and ape populations of the world is testament to this phenomenon of specific and long term adaptations. These models are inaccurate in depicting this human diversity, but I have no doubt they have a very general (or should I say specific) legitimacy. I believe many groups of humans evolved along many different evolutionary time lines going back hundreds of thousands of years, and many phenotypes arose in parallel. In an attempt to codify, and with a small sampling, the tendency is to oversimplify what is uncertain and astoundingly complex. Time has permanently erased most of the evidence, leaving us with a very incomplete picture. Genetics reveal these many to have been reduced to as few as sixty at one time in the not to distant past. History is riddled with the unexpected.

It's too bad the reality of what a farce these are doesn't come into play. Consider "Lucy" - when it's stated that he "used this information to fill out the features of the fossils. Each sculpture starts with the cast of a fossilized skull" - that's pure fantasy, imagination, non-science. Just look at the actual bones that were found of "Lucy" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)

It takes QUITE a bit of imagination to fill out that skull - especially since there is NOT one. And let's not even go into the fact that some of those bones weren't even found in the same place. What a bunch of junk science this is.

We'll see if the Smithsonian even allows this comment to stand.

In March 2000 National Geographic commissioned four artists to sketch what they believed 2-million year old Homo habilis looked like from castings of seven bone fragments they were given to examine. Each artist produced radically different renditions all without body hair.

Give this simple test to paleoartists who recreate Neanderthals, etc. for museums:
Give them a skull of a person who died recently and ask them to recreate the face. The result will have no resemblance at all to the photograph of the real person.

One New York museum displays a life-sized diorama of two hairy homonids walking together in Africa based on a set of footprints!

Patrice Harper, some of these are women. Else were on the Smithsonian site it tells which ones are. did you assume thery were all male. The Florensis is female.

I agree with Charles only I say a couple of these guys hanging around 7-11's. It is strange how some of the facial features transcends time.

Sir: Earley Humanity apears to be dark skin so where did the white race come from?

The Afarensis,Boisei,Erectus and Florensis seem to be females.

The images are truly amazing.

Just a note on how accurate they might be, since some have suggested it is artistic license. . .

I don't know if Gurche has any background in forensics, but it is a common practice to reconstruct the appearance of skeletal remains in order to identify a person. Most of these reconstructed faces are quite close to the actual person. With a moderately complete skull, one can reconstruct with a high degree of accuracy muscle, skin, etc. It kind of stands to reason that the same could be done with these paleo-skulls (yes, I know that's not a word).

True, there are variables. We don't know exactly how fat is distrbuted in the faces of these individuals, but we can guess - so these are probably pretty close to the actual appearance of the species, if not the individual.

Beautiful work!

These renderings are too marvelous for words. I found myself staring and wondering, almost asking "Who are you?" It is sad that many among us have had their brains hijacked by hucksters. It is no small wonder that Americans are falling behind on the intellectual scale.

Thank you very much for these images.

Just loved these faces, after so many years of looking @ skulls and wondering what they must have really looked like.
THANK YOU SOOO MUCH! Cudos to the artist!

Perfectttt!

What a Wonderful concept to allow us in this time to see
how person's looked and in some cases lived their daily lives thousands of years ago.
I've been working on a story over the last couple of years and some of it takes place 20,000 years ago. As I have researched information about persons and their lives from this time it has taken on a much bigger roll in my story and my personal life. For instance, how did they communicate with each other, when did they have the understanding of a leader and followers, did they take care of their elderly? Viewing your magnificent images, makes everything more real!
It brings home how we may have lived and interacted with each other and our surroundings.
Best Regards,
Todd

This is pretty neat, but is kinda creepy, its funny to think about this stuff...