How did Picknett and Prince arrive at such a tall estimate?
In their book, Turin Shroud - In Whose Image, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince wrote:
Our calculations put the height of the man on the Shroud - at the front - at 203cm...Put in imperial measurements we calculate that the front image is 6ft 8in and the back 6ft 10in.
They calculated this height by assuming that the head height to body height ratio on the shroud was 1 to 9 rather than the average 1 to 8, which is generally considered more normal. they simply multiplied their estimated height of the head by nine. This is profoundly erroneous.
moreover, it is very difficult to measure the height of the head. We
don't know the angle of the head, how collimated it is to the image
plane or how distorted it may be (considering a Mercator projection
view).
Nonetheless, using Picknett and Prince's estimate for the head and
correcting it to the 1 to 8 ratio (which is admittedly only an average)
the height of the man on the shroud is 6 ft 0 in.
- How tall is the image of the man on the Shroud of Turin?
- What are the various studies for the height of the man on the Shroud?