Every child knows that: Santa Claus comes from the North Pole, he has got a beutiful white beard and he is  overweight and on the night between 24 and 25 December he brings gifts to kids all over the world travelling on a reindeer sleigh. But the story of this beloved folklore character is almost as long and fascinating as his legend. Santa Claus was born on the shores of the Mediterranean, and evolves in Northern urope and takes on its final form in the New World, from where it then spreads almost to every part of the globe.

In the beginning it was St Nicholas. Nicholas earned a reputation as a proud defender of the Christian faith.The iconography has handed down several of his images, but none look too much like the cheerful, overweight, white-bearded man we attribute to Santa today.

 Catherine Wilkinson, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Manchester, tried to reconstruct its true appearance. Wilkinson examined this data in light of modern forensic anthropology techniques, helping with facial reconstruction software and adding details inferred from the features of the Mediterranean populations of the time. The result is an old man, with olive skin, a broken nose perhaps ddue to the persecutions, and a beard and grey hair. 

D.D.