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Skull of Nicolas Copernicus Unearthed?
He was the first man on earth to argue that the sun lay at the center of the universe. Now Polish scientist believe they have unearthed the skull of one of the most brilliant minds ever to have contemplated the heavens: that of the Renaissance father of modern astronomy Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543).
"We found the remains of a man who with a very great degree of likelihood can be identified as Copernicus," Archaeology Professor Jerzy Gasowski who led a two-year archaeological research mission told Poland's Rzeczpospolita daily.
The search culminated in the discovery of the remains of a 70-year-old man buried beneath the main Holy Cross altar of the Gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, the Polish Baltic Sea coast town once known as the East Prussian Frauenberg.
But despite two years of painstaking research Gassowski admits that without DNA-testing "we cannot be 100 percent certain" the skull is indeed that of the renowned astronomer.
Cutting-edge computer graphics and criminal identification techniques were employed to create a facial reconstruction of an older man which bears a striking resemblance to portraits of a younger Copernicus, down to the small scar above his right eyebrow.
A Polish-born astronomer, mathematician and clergyman, Copernicus is regarded as the father of modern astronomy for developing the heliocentric theory of the universe which posits the sun, rather than the earth, at its center.
Earlier beliefs centered on the Ptolemaic theory that saw the earth as a mass fixed at the center of the universe, with the sun and the stars and all other celestial bodies revolving around it.
He shocked his contemporaries by asserting the astronomic theory that the earth rotated on its axis once a day and traveled around the sun once a year in his pioneering 1530 work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Click here for more about this subject. -Ed.
"We found the remains of a man who with a very great degree of likelihood can be identified as Copernicus," Archaeology Professor Jerzy Gasowski who led a two-year archaeological research mission told Poland's Rzeczpospolita daily.
The search culminated in the discovery of the remains of a 70-year-old man buried beneath the main Holy Cross altar of the Gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral in Frombork, the Polish Baltic Sea coast town once known as the East Prussian Frauenberg.
But despite two years of painstaking research Gassowski admits that without DNA-testing "we cannot be 100 percent certain" the skull is indeed that of the renowned astronomer.
Cutting-edge computer graphics and criminal identification techniques were employed to create a facial reconstruction of an older man which bears a striking resemblance to portraits of a younger Copernicus, down to the small scar above his right eyebrow.
A Polish-born astronomer, mathematician and clergyman, Copernicus is regarded as the father of modern astronomy for developing the heliocentric theory of the universe which posits the sun, rather than the earth, at its center.
Earlier beliefs centered on the Ptolemaic theory that saw the earth as a mass fixed at the center of the universe, with the sun and the stars and all other celestial bodies revolving around it.
He shocked his contemporaries by asserting the astronomic theory that the earth rotated on its axis once a day and traveled around the sun once a year in his pioneering 1530 work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Click here for more about this subject. -Ed.
