These differences were then emphasised to create caricatured faces, which were combined with pigmentation predictions to allow a forensic artist to produce composites of the individuals' likely appearance at the age of 25. Researchers also generated 3D meshes of the mummies' facial features and used heat maps to highlight the differences between the trio so they could refine the details of each individual. Interestingly, their genetic makeup was closer to that of modern individuals in the Mediterranean or the Middle East than it was to modern Egyptians, the company said. The firm's experts found that the three Egyptian men, who belonged to an ancient Nile community and are estimated to have lived between 2,023 and 2,797 years ago, had light brown skin with dark eyes and hair. 'This is the first time comprehensive DNA phenotyping has been performed on human DNA of this age,' Parabon said in a statement. The technology has also been used to generate leads in criminal cases where there are no suspects or database hits, or to help identify remains, for example. As an example, the test can say a person has green eyes with 61 per cent confidence, green or blue with 79 per cent confidence, and that they definitely don't have brown eyes with 99 per cent confidence.īased on ancestry, and other markers, the test also creates a likely facial shape.įrom all of this information, it builds a computer generated e-fit.
