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6 unusual facts about Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov


Gur-e Amir

The anthropologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov was able to reconstruct Tamerlane's facial features from his skull, and it was also confirmed that he was 172 cm in height and would have walked with a pronounced limp.

Mikhail Gerasimov

Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov (1907–1970), Soviet archaeologist and anthropologist

Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov

He studied the skulls and meticulously reconstructed the faces of more than 200 people, including Yaroslav the Wise, Ivan the Terrible, Friedrich Schiller, Rudaki and, most famously, Timur (Tamerlane).

In 1937, he also worked on the reconstruction of face of Rudaki, the great Persian poet.

In 1937-1939, he reconstructed three faces from skulls of the USSR Academy a Sciences - a Papuan, a Kazakh and Khevsur Caucasian, and performed numerous forensic reconstructions for the NKVD.

Rudaki

In pages 394-404, he refers to historical events and references in Persian books and poems, as well as the forensic findings of Russians in early 20th century including Mikhail Gerasimov (who reconstructed Rudaki's face based on his bones found in his tomb, see above picture), concludes that Rudaki and Amir Nasr Samani were Ismailis and there was a revolt against Ismalis around 940, a few years before Rudaki's death.



see also