A group of scientists has tried to restore the faces of ancient Vietnamese people who lived thousand years ago, revealing interesting stories about their lives.

Eight years ago, people discovered human skulls and skeletons dating back to the Dong Son age – 2,100 years ago – in a tomb in Dong Xa, Kim Dong district, Hung Yen province.

With a desire to discover more about the life of ancient Vietnamese people, Dr. Nguyen Viet, Director of the Southeast Asia Prehistory Centre and his colleagues reconstructed the face of a 17 to 18-year-old girl living in Dong Son age, from the skull they found.

To do that the scientists had to X-ray 100 people in Hung Yen province to check, adjust and find out fundamental parameters of the figure of ancient people in Dong Xa.

After this step, scientists continued to restore the faces of three more women and a man, of whom the oldest was about 40-45 years old. The scientists rebuilt not only the shape, but also facial appearances.

Viet’s research on 60 Dong Son age skeletons unearthed in Dong Xa showed that the average height of women at that time was about 1.40m-1.50m and men, between 1.45m-1.65m.

For long-term research, Dr. Viet built a place to store 70 skeletons of ancient Vietnamese people, including the remains of those of Hoa Binh culture dated tens of thousands of years ago, at Pham Huy Thong museum in Quang Ninh province.

Scientists of the Southeast Asia Prehistory Centre also worked with foreign counterparts to study and detect common diseases of ancient Vietnamese people as well as the reasons for their deaths.
They also studied samples of collected clothes, finding that the clothes were made from flax fibre.

Dr. Viet said that he plans to open the first museum of wax models of ancient Vietnamese people and cooperate with US experts to restore the faces and figures of these people using 3D technology./.