Humans can often recognize the buried fragments of an only partially revealed
cranium even when other bones may look like shards of stone. The human brain has a specific region for recognizing faces,
and is so attuned to finding them that it can see faces in a few
dots and lines or
punctuation marks; the human brain cannot separate the image of the human skull from the familiar human face. Because of this, both the death and the now-past life of the skull are symbolized.
