New reconstructions show piercing eyes of men who lived 2,500 years ago in mysterious Indian civilization

Two men who lived around 2,500 years ago in what is now southern India have been brought to life in new digital reconstructions — and research into their remains is revealing secrets about their mysterious civilization.

The realistic facial models are based on two skulls discovered at a burial site known as Kondagai, located in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Kumaresan Ganesan, the head of the Department of Genetics at Madurai Kamaraj University who was involved with the analysis of human remains found at Kondagai, told Live Science.

Kondagai is thought to be the burial ground of a nearby archaeological site called Keeladi, which researchers think was home to a sophisticated urban civilization dating to around 580 B.C. This culture had brick houses with tiled roofs, traded with far-away regions, wrote in an ancient form of the Tamil script, and used relatively advanced technologies such as sophisticated water management systems, Ganesan said.

The first traces of Keeladi were identified by the Archaeological Survey of India in 2013, and only a small portion of the ancient urban settlement and its associated burial ground have been excavated to date.

By analyzing ancient DNA extracted from the skulls and other human remains found at Kondagai, Ganesan and his team are attempting to learn more about the enigmatic inhabitants of Keeladi.

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Bringing the two skulls to "life"

The two skulls were excavated in 2021. Researchers found the remains inside burial urns, dozens of which have been uncovered at the site so far, Ganesan said. The people of Keeladi buried their dead in these urns alongside grave goods, including jewelry, pottery and food offerings, research has shown.

An anatomical analysis by another scientist suggested that the men were between the ages of 50 and 60 when they died. Their causes of death are still unknown.

To recreate the appearance of the individuals, the researchers took CT scans of the skulls to create virtual 3D models of them, which they then sent to Face Lab in the U.K., a research unit that specializes in the reconstruction of faces.

"These [reconstructed] models can help us to understand people from the past and allow us to compare ourselves to our ancestors," Caroline Wilkinson, director of Face Lab at Liverpool John Moores University in the U.K., which produced the reconstructions, told Live Science.

Face Lab members digitally recreated the facial elements around the skull bones, including the muscles, fat and skin. They used databases of modern South Asian populations for reference, which contain information about soft tissue depth and other facial characteristics, Ganesan said.

There was some creative interpretation involved in the choice of eye, skin and hair colors, in addition to how signs of aging were depicted, Wilkinson noted.

In this case, the eye, skin and hair color of the average South Indian were used, Ganesan said. However, he described these reconstructions as a "first draft" while his team works on deriving more data from DNA extracted from the skulls, which could provide new insights into which colors would be most appropriate. "Once we have that, it will be updated, if required," Ganesan said.

With DNA studies of the skulls in progress, one of the researchers' goals is to trace the ancestries of these ancient individuals. Preliminary genetic findings suggest that these ancient men have close affinities with modern South Asian populations, meaning it's possible that they are, in part, the ancestors of some people living within South India today, Ganesan said.

"However, we don't have DNA data to specify that," he added, explaining that while researchers have access to broad DNA databases of the modern South Asian population, they don't have the required region-specific data for Tamil Nadu or the larger area of South India to prove an ancestral connection.