DIGGING UP SANTA

People have always wanted to know,what the real Santa Claus(St Nicholas)
looked like.St Nicholas'remains are buried in the crypt of the Basilica di San Nicola in Bari,Italy.These bones were temporarily removed,when the crypt was repaired during the 1950's.At the Vatican's request,anatomy professor Luigi Martino,from the University of Bari,took thousands of minutely detailed measurements and x-ray photographs(roentgenography)of the skull and other bones.

In the present;modern forensic anthropology has developed tools to discover what people looked like.These techniques are primarily used to identify unknown victims of homicide or unnatural death.However they can be used for
re-constructing the faces of famous historic persons,if there is access to the right information.
In this case,since the bones weren't available for examination,the current professor of forensic pathology at the University of Bari engaged an expert facial anthropologist from England to construct a model of the saint's head from the thousands of pictures and painstaking measurements taken in the fifties.

Using this data and a state of the art computer,a face gradually emerged from the distant past.The nose presented some difficulty because it had been badly broken,probably when he had been imprisoned and tortured,during the persecution of Christians under Roman Emperor Diocletian.The nasal bones between the eyes had been shattered.

The three dimensional image was then sent to a digital artist to give it detail and colour.This gave it Greek,Mediterranean olive toned skin,brown eyes,grey hair and a beard,trimmed in fourth century style.The result is an image of a Greek man(St nicholas was born in the village of Patara.At the time,the area was part of the Greek empire and is now on the southern coast of Turkey.)He is about sixty years old,five-feet-six inches tall,with a heavy jaw and a broken nose.

The final result of all this work is the upper,central picture ,surrounded by traditional paintings of St Nicholas(top of page )
How did he transform into the jolly elf we know today?In the early nineteenth century,descendants of the Dutch,who settled in New York,held annual St Nicholas days.They made his image into more of a jolly,plump Dutch burgher with a clay pipe than a saintly bishop(mostly due to a popular book at the time,Knickerbocker's History of New York).And,so,began the transformation to which we have all added a little something.He has become a mythical being with magic powers who hangs around with elves,but he still represents the spirit of giving,just like the original.
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