THIS IS EXCITING! The first articulated Neanderthal skeleton to come out of the ground for over 20 years has been unearthed at one of the most important sites of mid-20th century archaeology: Shanidar Cave, in the foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan arch.cam.ac.uk/news/shanidar-z
“To have primary evidence of such quality from this famous Neanderthal site will allow us to use modern technologies to explore everything from ancient DNA to long-held questions about Neanderthal ways of death, and whether they were similar to our own.” #ShanidarZ
“Shanidar Cave was excavated in the 1950s, when archaeologist Ralph Solecki uncovered partial remains of ten Neanderthal men, women and children.”
“Some were clustered together, with clumps of ancient pollen surrounding one of the skeletons. Solecki claimed this showed Neanderthals buried their dead and conducted funerary rites with flowers.”
“The ‘flower burial’ captured the public imagination, and prompted a reappraisal of a species that – prior to Shanidar Cave – was thought to have been dumb and animalistic.”
“It also sparked a decades-long controversy over whether evidence from this extraordinary site did actually point to death rituals, or burial of any kind, and if Neanderthals were really capable of such cultural sophistication.”
“Ralph Solecki died last year aged 101, having never managed to conduct further excavations at his most famous site, despite several attempts.”
“In 2011, the Kurdish Regional Govt approached Prof Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute about revisiting Shanidar Cave. With Solecki’s enthusiastic support, digging began in 2014, but stopped after two days when ISIS got too close. It resumed the following year.”
“We thought with luck we’d be able to find the locations where they had found Neanderthals in the 1950s, to see if we could date the surrounding sediments,” said Barker. “We didn’t expect to find any Neanderthal bones.” #ShanidarZ
“In 2016, in one of the deepest parts of the trench, a rib emerged from the wall, followed by a lumbar vertebra, then the bones of a clenched right hand. However, metres of sediment needed carefully digging out before the team could excavate the skeleton.” #ShanidarZ
“During 2018-19 they went on to uncover a complete skull, flattened by thousands of years of sediment, and upper body bones almost to the waist – with the left hand curled under the head like a small cushion.”
“Early analysis suggests it is over 70,000 years old. While the sex is yet to be determined, the latest Neanderthal discovery has the teeth of a “middle- to older-aged adult”.
“Shanidar Z has now been brought on loan to the archaeological labs at Cambridge, where it is being conserved and scanned to help build a digital reconstruction, as more layers of silt are removed.”
“Four of the Neanderthals, including the ‘flower burial’ and the latest find, formed what researchers describe as a “unique assemblage”. It raises the question of whether Neanderthals were returning to the same spot within the cave to inter their dead.”
“The new excavation suggests that some of these bodies were laid in a channel in the cave floor created by water, which had then been intentionally dug to make it deeper,” said Barker. “There is strong early evidence that Shanidar Z was deliberately buried.”
“CT-scans have revealed the petrous bone – one of the densest in the body; a wedge at the base of the skull – to be intact, offering hope of retrieving ancient Neanderthal DNA from the hot, dry region where “interbreeding” most likely took place as humans spilled out of Africa.”
“If Neanderthals were using Shanidar cave as a site of memory for the repeated ritual interment of their dead, it would suggest cultural complexity of a high order.”
#ShanidarZ
#ShanidarZ
“New Neanderthal remains associated with the 'flower burial' at Shanidar Cave" - Emma Pomeroy, Paul Bennett, Chris O. Hunt, Tim Reynolds, Lucy Farr, Marine Frouin, James Holman, Ross Lane, Charles French & Graeme Barker is published in Antiquity: cambridge.org/core/journals/…
