Ancient bones can return a wealth of information to the modern researcher. But they can’t ever truly reveal the dead’s lost humanity. Only when the hollow sockets become the thoughtful eyes of a girl or healed fractures give a knight a handsome scar does time vanish as skeletons turn back into real human beings.

10Ava

Nearly four millennia ago, a young woman died in ancient Britain, and she was unusual. Ava’s skull was strange, and so was her grave.

Nicknamed “Ava” after Achavanich, where she was unearthed in 1987, and aged 18 to 22, she most likely belonged to the Beaker people, a European group with short and rounded skulls. But Ava’s head was uneven yet shapely enough to suggest deliberate binding.

During the Middle Bronze Age, it was customary to bury the dead under a cairn or in a soil pit. Ava’s unmarked grave was cut with a lot of effort into solid rock. A beaker found inside also hinted that Ava was special—its designs have never been seen before. She died too young and from unknown causes.

9The Mary Rose Archer

The Mary Rose was the flagship of King Henry VIII’s war fleet. She sank over 500 years ago and took many souls to the bottom of the sea. In 1982, the wreck was raised with a dead crew of 92 skeletons.

Historical accounts mention elite troops onboard, and this meant longbow archers. One such identified archer was an impressive 2 meters (6 ft) tall—well above the average Tudor male. Personal items indicated his rank was high and his built had to be powerful to draw the tough 16th-century longbow.

To reveal what this crack soldier looked like, a scan of his skull was fed into a 3-D printer that popped out an exact replica. The archer’s face was reconstructed around the printed skull. The result showed a man with a no-nonsense look that would make any opponent think twice.

8The USS Monitor

A more recent maritime tragedy involved the USS Monitor, the Navy’s first ironclad warship. She sank in a storm In 1862, while being towed off Cape Hatteras. Almost 150 years onward, her gun turret resurfaced through a joint effort by the Navy and NOAA. Inside, they found a pair of skeletons, two of only 16 Civil War sailors to be recovered.

After reconstructing them, NOAA released the images. One of the men who drowned in the turret was very young, between 17 and 24, and had movie star good looks. His companion, although about the same height and also white, was older. Aged 30 to 40, he was likely an avid pipe smoker and had a wide face dotted with close-set eyes and a big nose.

7The Girl Of Uchter Moor

In 2000, a peat harvester in Germany pulled up a body. Police initially thought it was the missing Elke Kerll, but a DNA test disproved this. She was dubbed “Moora” after Uchter Moor where she was found. Her origins languished for years until her missing hand turned up in the same area. More tests showed that the bog body wasn’t modern but a teenager who had died during the Iron Age.

Five independent teams recreated five slightly different Mooras. But most of her features—eyes, nose, and cheekbones—were all alike. Moora’s behavior still confounds experts.

She went deeply into the bog, a highly dangerous thing to do. Was the teen fleeing or collecting bilberries (a mind-altering fruit)? Whatever followed, the lack of ancient skeletal trauma indicates an accident rather than murder ended her short life.

6The Silla Skull

The Silla Kingdom controlled much of the Korean Peninsula (57 BC–AD 935), but despite being one of the most enduring and influential dynasties, complete skeletons from that period are scarce. Incredibly, a perfectly preserved grave was found in 2013, that of a woman’s.

Her skull was fragmented but, once assembled, revealed a strange elongated head researchers don’t believe was the result of binding. Had she suffered this procedure, the bones in the front of her skull would’ve been flatter, and the sides would’ve grown more to adjust to the pressure of flattening. The Silla woman shows none of this. Her skull is normal except for its odd shape. Experts believe that it might’ve been a natural occurrence, albeit rare, in the ethnic group during that era.

5The French Mummy

Louis XVI was beheaded in 1793, and King Henry IV of France had his long-dead head removed, as revolutionaries desecrated as many royal tombs as they could find. Rediscovered in a private collection, the skull’s face was digitally returned, and to the excitement of researchers, it mirrored known depictions of Henry, a mole and ear piercing included.

The embalming method fits historical records of how Henry’s body was prepared, but it obscures the papery mummy’s identity. Sure, the face resembles Henry, but the embalming and careless modern handling contaminated the DNA so much that it can no longer be compared with his living descendants.

4The Stirling Knight

It’s not often one can meet a real medieval knight. But renovations at Stirling Castle made this possible when the body of a young man was unearthed. Near him, a woman had her head crushed, possibly by a mace. The pair was part of 10 skeletons discovered, including two babies. A siege appeared to have been behind their violent deaths.

His skeleton revealed the powerful physique of someone trained since boyhood with weapons and horses. Healed injuries proved he was a professional soldier who had survived some hairy battles. A facial reconstruction showed the scars of old wounds. Unexpectedly, documents revealed his name. He was Sir John de Stricheley, an English nobleman who died in 1341, possibly felled by a Scottish arrow.

3The Flores Woman

Better known as the controversial “hobbit ,” her remains were found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, standing an adorable 1 meter (3 ft) tall. A recent artistic rendering showed that the 30-year-old had high cheekbones and large eyes. The more accurate software showed that the woman had modern features rather than the monkey look paleo-artists previously credited her with.

While researchers say she’s no beauty queen, missing much of what one would call a forehead, it remains incredible to see such a long lost part of the human family tree. That is, if she is even an ancient human. Officially called Homo floresiensis, she lived 18,000 years ago and with a different-shaped brain and wrist bones more consistent with apes. Scientists believe she might be an entirely new species.

2Dante

When Dante’s skull was turned back into a face, researchers were surprised to see that he differed from traditional depictions of the man. Usually, he is shown with a stern or severe expression, but when his features were revealed through forensic efforts, Dante had a softer gaze and looked a whole lot friendlier. However, his famously hooked nose was spot-on.

Among other difficulties, Dante suffered the death of his beloved Beatrice and banishment from Florence in 1302 for opposing Pope Boniface VIII. His actual bones remain hidden by Italian monks who refused scientists access to them. Dante’s face was recreated using a replica skull.

1St. Anthony

When a Brazilian expert was asked to reconstruct the appearance of an ancient person, all he was told was that the skull belonged to a 36-year-old man. The face was that of an ordinary-looking male, perhaps somebody easily forgotten when passed on the street. Only afterward did the expert find out that he had helped millions of believers to gaze upon the real face of Saint Anthony.

Born in 1195, St. Anthony became a monk at 15 when he joined the Augustinians. Two remarkable events mark the career of this great saint, one in life and the other in death. While alive, he personally met with the famous St. Francis of Assisi, and the second was how fast he was canonized. The second fastest in history, St. Anthony was sainted merely a year after he died at a convent in 1231.

+The Face Of God

The most explosive headline in human history would be the announcement that the skull of Jesus Christ has been found. Unfortunately, there is no sign of it. Unfolding the next best thing, researchers studied the Turin Shroud. Whether it’s a clever artistic fraud or a real miracle, one cannot resist looking into what could very well be the face of Christ.

Employing sketch artist expertise and computer graphics, specialists recreated both the body and the face of the man-print on the Shroud. The results matched the historical portrayals of Jesus. Even if the 3-D pictures are a little rough-edged, they are believed to be the most accurate Turin reconstruction.

Pictured here is Ray Downing’s final illustration of the Man in the Shroud. Downing was the artist who created the reconstruction for the History Channel. Whether you believe this is the face of God or not, it is certainly quite an accomplishment to take a reverse image from an ancient cloth and turn it into a virtually-photographic quality reproduction.

Facial recognition technology can trace its roots as far back as the 1960s. The ability to implement it large scale and ubiquitously only really came into being in the modern computer age, of course, and in the present it seems to be nearly everywhere, with fears that it will become even more widespread in the future. But many of us are unaware of just what is already being done with the technology in terms of both strengths and limitations.

10. We Have Facial Recognition For Cats

Is any technology even worth your time if it can’t be used for the benefit of cats and dogs? Facial recognition luckily fits the bill here as the technology has been implemented towards the end of reuniting lost pets with owners. 

The concept is as simple as you might expect. There’s an app which allows you to upload photos of a lost pet. Once the pics are in the database if someone finds your pet, the animal can be matched with facial recognition to your fur friend and you can be reunited.

That’s not the only use, either. There’s a cat feeder that makes use of facial recognition to monitor the eating habits of your pets. This could range from alerting you that one cat isn’t eating enough to preventing another cat from stealing everyone’s food by shutting off the supply when it recognizes the same hungry boy coming back for seconds. 

9. The FBI Spent $1B on Facial Recognition That Could Only Match Photos to Photos

Law enforcement obviously has a vested interest in facial recognition and while there is a ton to be said about the various legal implications, privacy concerns, nefarious prospects and more of that whole can of worms, there’s also something more basic and fundamental to discuss and that’s just how well it works in the first place. 

Now, in the present, the technology has definitely improved and there are examples of it performing very well. But if we go back to when the FBI first invested in it, things get a little uglier. The Bureau spent about $1 billion on software that couldn’t actually recognize faces unless they were matched to quality photos. 

You needed to take one good quality, front-facing, clear photo of a person and the computer could match it to another photo that met the same requirements. You might recognize this as something a human could also do. The computer’s only advantage might be the ability to do it quickly.

If the computer doesn’t have a second, quality photo to match it to, then there is no match. This was discovered in Boston after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. 

The FBI had access to photos of the two suspects and they were there, caught on video, but the facial recognition software couldn’t match them because the surveillance footage wasn’t high quality, thus making it most useless. 

According to one FBI source, the billion dollar software was only good for matching “driver’s license and passport photos to other driver’s license and passport photos.”

The FBI had access to photos of the two suspects and they were there, caught on video, but the facial recognition software couldn’t match them because the surveillance footage wasn’t high quality, thus making it most useless at the time. According to one FBI source, the billion dollar software was only good for matching “driver’s license and passport photos to other driver’s license and passport photos.”

8. Juggalo Makeup Defies Some Kinds of Facial Recognition Technology

If you’re looking to trick facial recognition for some kind of lawful and non-nefarious reasons, look into becoming a fan of the Insane Clown Posse. The makeup worn by the band and their fans, who you may know by the more colorful name of “Juggalos” has proven to be something facial recognition has a tough time with.

Facial recognition relies on contrast for a lot of the ways it differentiates faces to identify them. Juggalo makeup uses a white base with black bands and other shapes to create a sort of monochromatic clown motif. Because it creates stark but fake contrast, facial recognition can’t tell who it’s looking at.

This revelation came to light when LiveNation and Ticketmaster bought military facial recognition to use at concert entry points. Juggalo makeup, especially contrasting black and white around the mouth and chin, confuses facial recognition by obscuring your jawline which is one of the major areas the technology focuses on.

Of course, there are kinds of technology that work differently and don’t focus on contrast which would render Juggalo makeup useless, but at least you’d still be visibly supporting the Insane Clown Posse. 

7. Eyebrows Are Vital to Facial Recognition

For some people, having nice eyebrows is a big deal. For others, having fuzzy caterpillars shading their eyes is just fine. For facial recognition, eyebrows are of the utmost importance. While eyebrows may not seem like they would play a key role in facial recognition when compared to things like eyes, noses, lips and overall face shape, that’s not the case.

Biologically speaking, eyebrows are vital for identifying faces. The presence of hair, otherwise missing from most human faces, provides a major point of contrast to someone looking at you. Even person to person, eyebrows are key for understanding another face. It makes sense that software also takes this into account.

While eyebrows haven’t always been used as a key identifier in various softwares, the Covid-19 pandemic made some researchers tweak the way their software worked since many people were wearing masks which eliminated things like mouths, jawlines and noses as identifying features. 

According to some research, eye color and shape, lip thickness and eyebrow thickness are vital for identifying a face and the importance of the eyebrows can’t be overstated. 

6. Taylor Swift Used Facial Recognition to Identify Stalkers at Concerts

We already saw that concerts use facial recognition, and it’s more than just for Juggalos. Taylopr Swift, one of the biggest artists in the world right now, has been using it to identify potential stalkers. 

Back in 2018, Swift had kiosks set up outside of her performance at the Rose Bowl. As people filtered in, the kiosks were showing off clips of her dance routines but they were also secretly scanning faces. Facial recognition was used to cross reference all the faces against a list of known stalkers she’s had to deal with in the past so security could be ready.

The same technology is being used at NASCAR events, in malls and at sporting events for a variety of very non-specific purposes that include both security and also advertising. So if you have gone out to a public event in the last few years there’s a good chance that some company you have never heard of has your name and photo on file along with a list of things it has determined you like. By 2019 the company had already collected data on 110 million people attending events.

For what it’s worth, the company insists it doesn’t keep the data it collects, and it doesn’t even take identifiable images of people. Sounds reasonable.

5. An Airport Vending Machine Used Facial Recognition To Dispense Coffee to People Who Yawned

Most people seem leery of facial recognition at first but there have been efforts to convince people to embrace it and they’ve worked well. All you really need to do is give people a reason to, and that’s what South African coffee company Douwe Egberts did.

The company set up a coffee vending machine in a busy airport but it had no way to actually pay for the coffee. However, cameras in the machine identified people who yawned and dispensed free coffee for them. Soon enough people figured out what triggered the machine and everyone who wanted free coffee could get it. 

The whole thing was described as a marketing stunt, which it was, and stories detail the smiles and fun of all the people once they clued in. Less talked about was that the technology was conditioning people to produce a desired response, which worked out like gangbusters for the company and proved to them they can use facial recognition in campaigns to ensure customers are doing what they want.

4. There Are Hairstyles That Trick Facial Recognition

While makeup has proven capable of confusing facial recognition it’s not the only aesthetic choice you can make to throw the software for a loop. There are certain hairstyles that have proven confusing in the past as well, notably CV Dazzle.

The technique was designed by a man named Adam Harvey as part of his Master’s thesis and showed that combinations of hairstyles, makeup and even clothes could camouflage a wearer from what, at the time, was the most widely used facial recognition software algorithm. 

While the designs might look eccentric to a living observer, it’s unlikely you’d ever think the person was actively trying to dupe facial recognition software. Instead, they’d just look like they were on their way home from Fashion Week.

While the designs might look eccentric to a living observer, it’s unlikely you’d ever think the person was actively trying dupe facial recognition software. Instead, they’d just look like they were on their way home from Fashion Week.

In much the same way Juggalo makeup could throw off the software, this was a less ostentatious way of doing it, or at least a more fashion forward way, that could include streaks of makeup or even hair obscuring part of a face, in particular one eye or in a way that alters the perceived elliptical shape of the face and head..

3. Facial Recognition Is Used in China To Stop Toilet Paper Thieves

When it comes to cutting edge uses for facial recognition, no one is making more of it than Beijing’s Temple of Heaven which is a sacred site and tourist attraction. In 2017, visitors using the bathroom at the Temple found themselves with facial recognition toilet paper dispensers. 

The machine scans your face before dispensing a length of paper. The reason? People kept visiting the bathrooms to steal toilet paper. Now it gives you what it thinks you need, a strip of paper two feet long, and if you come back for more, it will recognize your face and refuse to give up the goods. 

The machine scans your face before dispensing a length of paper. The reason? People kept visiting the bathrooms to steal toilet paper. Now it gives you what it thinks you need, a strip of paper two feet long, and if you come back for more it will recognize your face and refuse to give up the goods. 

So what happens if, in good faith, you need more paper? That’s too bad because you’re only getting two feet and you better make it work. There is an inconvenient work around, if you have some time on your hands. The machines are on nine minute timers, so if you want a second length, wait the 9 minutes and you get more. It’s inconvenient for anyone who needs it but probably even more so for would-be thieves. 

2. Malls Use Facial Recognition to Gather Biometric Data on Shoppers

We mentioned malls earlier when talking about Taylor Swift so let’s dig into that a little more deeply because this is far more pervasive than you may realize. Have you seen one of those mall directory kiosks that lets you look up maps of the mall and specific stores? There’s a good chance if your mall has one, it’s also running facial recognition software in the background with a camera trained on you and everyone else passing by. 

A couple of Canadian malls got in trouble for this in 2018 because customers had not been informed that they were being photographed or for what reason. Two years later an investigation determined that the company that owns the mall had used the same technology in a dozen malls across the country to collect the images of 5 million shoppers. 

The company claims it was only tracking foot traffic and nothing identifiable about the customers – just age and gender information for analysis. But it also collected video and even audio footage which officials claimed was just part of a test phase.

The mall says they informed customers because stickers on doors say cameras are being used for “safety and security” but the privacy commissions investigating didn’t think that counted when the actual cameras were harvesting biometric data to guess ages, genders and shopping habits.

1. Chinese Police Use Facial Recognition Sunglasses

Straight out of sci-fi, or failed ideas like Google Glass, police in China were outfitted with sunglasses in 2018 that had facial recognition tech integrated into the lenses. A camera in the frames can scan through crowds of people and using the same basic tech you might use to unlock your phone, the faces can be matched to a database. If there’s a face on file belonging to a wanted criminal, someone using a fake identity or anything like that, the glasses can alert the officer right away.

According to police sources in China, the technology proved to be very successful and aided in the capture of more than half a dozen individuals just by having cops wander through busy train stations.

It was also suggested that perhaps the technology could identify not just criminals but political dissidents or even just to profile people but surely no police force or government would ever do that.