Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

ncregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 96 posts

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#31

Post by inglor_cz »

jjmarr wrote: post #15
darkwater wrote: post #13

So, they discarded the form of the face coming from iconography BUT used the colors like hair and skin. This is SO catholic (well, or religious in general).

Aquinas was born in central Italy during the High Middle Ages. What hair and skin colour do you think he had?

There are many plausible "skins" for Aquinas. He didn't come from relatively homogeneous place like Japan on Iceland, he was Italian. And medieval Central Italy was a massive genetic melting pot of Etruscans, Latins, Greeks, Celts, Germanic people and North Africans. It used to be crossroads of a massive empire once, and was overrun by several invasions of other peoples afterwards.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#34

Post by inglor_cz »

paganel wrote: post #27
jjmarr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aquinas was born in central Italy during the High Middle Ages. What hair and skin colour do you think he had?

Who knows? He might have been blonde-haired for all we know, after all the Duchy of Spoleto set up by the Lombards was also located in Central Italy. You can get an idea of that past Lombard presence from this map [1]: " Percentage of Blond Hair in the Italian regions" (notice the green blob East of Naples), which, granted, it may not be 100% scientific but I reckon that it is at least based on some real data. Later…

My own grandmother was born on the shores of the Aegean Sea, in the region that now forms the border between Greece and Turkey.

She was Slavic herself, and blonde.

The Mediterranean is a lot more complicated that people from afar tend to think.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#35

Post by FartyMcFarter »

jaggederest wrote: post #24
biohcacker84 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see facial reconstruction of people of whom we have pictures and video. Since what I've heard of facial reconstruction is that there is a lot "art" in it.

I can tell you that, having seen some before, injured, and transplanted photos of facial transplant patients, their faces rapidly look much like they used to, regardless of the original person their face was transplanted from. Bone structure is, as far as I can tell as a layperson, the major determinant of how people look. I found it quite surprising as I thought it would be the other way around. The only obvious cha…

> Bone structure is, as far as I can tell as a layperson, the major determinant of how people look. I found it quite surprising as I thought it would be the other way around.

How would it work the other way around? You don't have a "look" before your bone structure exists right?

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#36

Post by jaggederest »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #35
jaggederest wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you that, having seen some before, injured, and transplanted photos of facial transplant patients, their faces rapidly look much like they used to, regardless of the original person their face was transplanted from. Bone structure is, as far as I can tell as a layperson, the major determinant of how people look. I found it quite surprising as I thought it would be the other way around. The only obvious cha…

> Bone structure is, as far as I can tell as a layperson, the major determinant of how people look. I found it quite surprising as I thought it would be the other way around. How would it work the other way around? You don't have a "look" before your bone structure exists right?

Right, but naively I would think that your bones are the foundation and your skin and muscles are the house on top. But really, the skin and muscles are more of the paint and trim, and the bones are the foundation, walls, and even part of the roof. Even your nose is largely determined by the angle and width of your facial bones, which is quite surprising to me, given that obviously there's no bone in it past the bridge.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#39

Post by clarionbell »

lqet wrote: post #26

> “Now, it could be that on the whole we’re a lot larger now than even overweight medievals were, or that St. Thomas was never the portly friar described by his legend,” Father Aquinas quipped, adding, “Regardless, the stories of St. Thomas’ size are probably exaggerated.” According to Martin Luther (who may have had an interest in discrediting him), Thomas Aquinas was able to devour an entire goose, and a piece of h…

Yep, definitely not a slander there. I mean, why would Luther of all people have a problem with one of most important figures of Catholic scholasticism.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#40

Post by clarionbell »

darkwater wrote: post #13

So, they discarded the form of the face coming from iconography BUT used the colors like hair and skin. This is SO catholic (well, or religious in general).

Ok, so how would you do it? Pick it random maybe, just ignoring all the sources?
Post reply on HN