DUBAI – In a global first unveiled on Friday, 17 December, the Serbia Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai has virtually brought back to life a prehistoric man, using a blend of advanced scientific techniques and innovative graphics originating from the gaming industry.
Ground-breaking technology has enabled the digital resurrection of a man from the Mesolithic Age believed to have been from the upper ranks of society.
Visitors to the Serbia Pavilion were among the first in the world to interact with this ancient ancestor, who lived 10,000 years ago on the banks of the River Danube in Serbia. The pavilion is displaying his digital reconstruction, allowing real-time human interactions, including returning a visitor’s smile with his own smile, and a variety of responses to other emotional states.
Serbian scientists’ combined knowledge gained by osteology – the study of bones – with the DNA science and forensic processes, plus state-of-the-art gaming technology from Serbian gaming innovators MetaHuman. The process created a digital ‘biokinetic’ model of the man’s face.
Professor Dr Sofija Stefanović, who led the team of scientists and innovators, said: “We used a novel technology called Digital Ancient Human (DAH), which combines a number of different methods to produce a scientifically based osteobiography of ancient people. The methods include state of the art protocols for bone studies, and we used [that] data to support physical reconstruction of the face based on skull bones.
“The world premiere of this global innovation, which comes from Serbia, has the potential to completely change the way museums present the past. So often, people are presented with static objects from a particular time period, but now for the first time we are able to represent real people with feelings and with emotions. There are significant applications for museums and heritage institutions to provide opportunities to interact with historical figures as we bring them to life.”
The actual skull of the man is kept in the Laboratory for Bioarchaeology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. Anthropological analyses of his skeleton have determined that at the time of his death, the man was about 50 years old, 1.78 metres tall, weighed 70 kilograms and ate mainly fish.
The prehistoric MetaHuman installation is now open for visitors to see and interact with at the Serbia Pavilion, 1000-2200 GST until 31 March 2022.