Hundreds of bone fragments have been discovered since the late 1950s inside a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan. The prehistoric site was an authentic cemetery to which Neanderthals returned again and again to bury their dead, which seemed to have been placed on top of each other.
In 2018, after more than half a century of work at the site, a team of archaeologists from the University of Cambridge found the flattened skull of a Neanderthal woman who lived about 75,000 years ago. Her face has just been reconstructed as part of a new Netflix documentary.
Secrets of the Neanderthals follows researchers as they return to Shanidar Cave to continue excavations. Neanderthals are believed to have become extinct about 40,000 years ago and discoveries of new remains are rare. The woman who appears in the documentary is one of the best preserved specimens found this century.
“Their skulls and those of humans look very different,” says Dr. Emma Pomeroy. “Neanderthal skulls have enormous brow ridges and lack chins, with a projected midface that generates more prominent noses. But the recreated face suggests that these differences were not so marked during his life,” says the paleoanthropologist.
”Perhaps this way it is easier to see how interbreeding between both species occurred, to the point that almost all people today still have Neanderthal DNA,” he points out. This woman is known as Shanidar Z and she could be the upper half of remains excavated in 1960.
The head had been crushed, possibly by a rockfall, relatively soon after death, when his brain had already decomposed but before the skull had filled with dirt. It was then further compacted by tens of thousands of years of sediment accumulation.
When archaeologists found it, the skull was flattened to about two centimeters thick. Experts used a glue-like consolidant to strengthen the bones. They carried Shanidar Z from the heart of the cave in dozens of small, foil-wrapped blocks measuring less than twenty-five feet of dirt and rock.
In the Cambridge laboratory, each block was explored before gradually diluting the glue and removing the bone fragments. The main conservator, Dr. Lucía López-Polín, reconstructed more than 200 pieces of skull to return it to its original shape, including the upper and lower jaws.
”Each skull fragment is gently cleaned while glue and consolidant are added back to stabilize the bone, which can be very soft, similar in consistency to a biscuit dipped in tea,” says Pomeroy. ”It's like a high-stakes puzzle. A single block can take fifteen days to process,” he notes.
The skull was scanned and 3D printed, forming the base of a head that was reconstructed by paleoartists Adrie and Alfons Kennis, who little by little manufactured layers of muscle and skin to end up revealing a face of this older woman, perhaps in her forties. , a significant age in the midst of prehistory.
With no pelvic bones, the team relied on sequencing proteins from tooth enamel to determine the sex of the specimen, which stood about five feet tall. The teeth were also used to measure their age through levels of wear, with some front teeth worn down to the roots.
Although the remains of at least ten different Neanderthals have already appeared in the cave, Shanidar Z is the fifth to be found among a group of bodies buried at a similar time in the same site, just behind a huge vertical rock, more than two meters high, which is located in the center of the cavern.
The rock had fallen from the ceiling long before the individuals were buried. Hence, the researchers point out in a statement that this could have served as a reference point for Neanderthals to identify a particular site to repeat their burials about 75,000 years ago.
"Neanderthals have had a bad press since the first ones were found more than 150 years ago," recalls Professor Graeme Barker, who is leading the excavations in the cave. "But our findings show that Shanidar may have been thinking about death and its consequences in ways not unlike those of their closest evolutionary cousins: ourselves," he says.
The other four bodies in the group were discovered by archaeologist Ralph Solecki in 1960. One was surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen and experts argued that the finds were evidence of funerary rituals in which the deceased rested on a bed of flowers.
From all these findings, it was concluded that Neanderthals were probably much more sophisticated than had been assumed based solely on their robust structures and ape-like eyebrows.
Shanidar Cave was first used by Neanderthals but later served as a shelter for Homo Sapiens. That is why specialists consider it to be an ideal laboratory to address one of the most important questions in human evolution: Why did Neanderthals disappear almost at the same time as Sapiens spread across their lands, where they had lived successfully for almost half a century? million years?
A study led by Professor Chris Hunt, from Liverpool John Moores University, now suggests that the pollen was left by bees burrowing into the cave floor. However, Shanidar's remains still show signs that Neanderthals were an empathic species.
One man, for example, had a paralyzed arm, deafness, and a head injury that probably left him partially blind, but he had lived a long time, so he must have received care from his tribemates.
Analysis of the site suggests that Shanidar Z was buried in a ravine formed by running water that had been dug by hand to accommodate the body. The posture indicates that she had been leaning against her side, with her left hand folded under her head and a stone placed behind her head as a small cushion.
While the Netflix documentary was being filmed in 2022, the team of archaeologists found remains of another individual at the same site, including the left shoulder blade, some ribs, and a fairly complete right hand. Microscopic traces of food have also been detected around the bodies.
These charred bits of seeds, nuts, and wild grasses suggest not only that Neanderthals prepared food (soaking and mashing legumes) and then cooked it, but that they also did so in the presence of their dead. ”Shaniar Z's remains were within arm's reach of living people who were cooking with fire and eating,” Pomeroy points out.
”For these Neanderthals there does not seem to be such a clear separation between life and death. We can see that they are returning to a particular place to bury their dead. This could occur decades or even thousands of years apart. Is it just a coincidence or is it intentional and if so, what brings them back?" he asks.
