Education · Interactive models
The Instrument Room
Every chapter of the tour warns that a measurement is only as honest as the method behind it. Here you get to hold the instruments. Drag, type, and toggle your way through three models pulled straight from the timeline, and watch how easily a number can be made to say what you want.
Back to the timelineThe Golden-Ratio Cheat
Drag and resize the golden rectangle over the portrait until it “fits.” Then reveal the cheat: the fit is an artifact of how much freedom you had to crop and slide, not evidence the face is built on φ. This is Markowsky's point, made with your own hands.
Read Proportion DreamsInteractive model loading…
The Cephalic Index
Enter a head's breadth and length and watch the cephalic index sort it into dolicho-, meso-, or brachycephalic. It is a real ratio and a genuinely trivial one. Seeing how little it captures is exactly why Boas's finding that it drifts within a single generation of migrants was so damaging to the science built on it.
Read The Skull WarsInteractive model loading…
Skull & Chin Across Species
Compare four real crania side by side, from Australopithecus africanus to Homo sapiens, and toggle the landmark notes to see where the face flattened, the brow receded, and the chin appeared. An honest static comparison of real photographs rather than an invented morph between taxa.
Read The Deep-Time FaceComparative figure loading…