Archaeology and anthropology were practiced under the ideological constraints of the period, which affected what questions could be asked and how findings could be interpreted and communicated.

The subsequent decades saw the skull remaining in Czech institutional custody while international scientific collaboration was limited by political circumstances.

After 1989, the opening of Czech science to international collaboration made the kind of joint work — combining Czech institutions’ custody of and expertise about the specimen with Max Planck Institute genomics capabilities — that produced the 2021 genome paper possible.

The 2026 reconstruction study itself is a product of this international network: Czech researchers at Charles University, French researchers working with the AFA3D system, the French artist Élisabeth Daynès in Paris, all working together with the common object of the skull at the center.

This international character reflects both the global nature of modern science and the specific history of how central European specimens became accessible to the broadest possible scientific community after 1989.