Faces from the past

History can sometimes feel like a dry, dusty subject, somehow detached from real life, when attempting to travel back in time through books alone.

But facial reconstructions of real people – like ones newly created from the remains of bodies dating back to the 14th century that were found in a historic churchyard in Leith – can have an extraordinary effect.

Suddenly it is so much easier to see these were people just like all the rest of us.

The people buried in Leith in

the 1300s may have had radically different beliefs to the current residents, but stare into their faces and they seem so, well, modern.

It is thought some of them died a “bad death”, perhaps during an armed siege or an outbreak of plague.

And some had led “hard lives” with malnutrition more common even by the standards of the time.

So as we look into their almostrecognisable faces, and think about what they might have been like, we should perhaps learn one lesson of history: there’s never been a better time to be alive than the present day.