James Smith
A British team of archaeologists on Thursday revealed the reconstructed face of a 75,000-year-old man Neanderthal woman, as researchers reassess the perception of the species as brutal and unsophisticated.
Named Shanidar Z. After the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where her skull was found in 2018, the latest discovery has led experts to investigate the mystery of the forty-something Neanderthal woman laid to rest in a sleeping position beneath a huge upright stone marker.
The lower part of his skeleton is believed to have been excavated in 1960 during groundbreaking excavations by American archaeologist Ralph Solecki, in which he found the remains of at least 10 Neanderthals.
“I think it can help us connect with who they were,” said Dr. Emma Pomeroy, a paleoanthropologist at the the Cambridge University project.
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“It is extremely moving and a huge privilege to be able to work with the remains of any individual, but especially someone as special as her.” she told BBC News.
Solecki’s discovery of a cluster of bodies, one of them surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen, led him to controversially argue that this was evidence of burial rituals with the dead placed in a bed of flowers.
Political difficulties meant it took around five decades for a team from Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores Universities to return to the site in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq.
“The skull was as flat as a pizza”
The last Neanderthals mysteriously died out about 40,000 years ago, just a few thousand years after humans arrived.
Shanidar Z’s skull—considered the best-preserved Neanderthal find of this century—was flattened to a thickness of 0.7 inches, possibly due to a rockfall relatively soon after his death.
Professor Graeme Barker, from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, told the BBC that “the skull was basically flat like a pizza.”
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“It’s been a remarkable journey to go from that to what you see now,” Barker said. “As an archaeologist, sometimes you can be indifferent to what you’re doing. But every now and then you’re surprised by the fact that you’re touching the past. We forget how extraordinary that is.”
Shanidar Z is the fifth body to be identified in the cluster buried over a period of at least several hundred years just behind the rock in the center of the cave.
Archaeologists believe the stone was used as an identifier to allow roaming Neanderthals to return to the same location to bury their dead.
The latest research from team member Professor Chris Hunt of John Moores now suggests that the pollen that gave rise to the controversial Solecki case “flower burial” theory it may actually have come from bees burrowing in the cave floor.
But Hunt said there was still evidence – such as the remains of a partially paralyzed Neanderthal found by Solecki – that the species were more empathetic than previously thought.
“There was a huge reassessment that was actually started by Ralph Solecki in this cave with ‘Shanidar 1,’ with his withered arm, his arthritis and his deafness, who must have been taken care of. That tells us there was compassion,” he said.
The positioning of the bodies of the cluster in the same place, in the same position and facing in the same direction implied “tradition” and “passing of knowledge between generations”, he said.
“Exciting” and “terrifying” discovery
“It seems much more like purposeful behavior that you wouldn’t associate with textbook stories about Neanderthals, namely that their lives were unpleasant, brutal and short,” he added.
Pomeroy, the Cambridge paleoanthropologist who discovered Shanidar Z, said finding his skull and upper body was “thrilling” and “terrifying.”
The skeleton and surrounding sediment had to be reinforced in situ with a glue-like consolidant before being removed in dozens of small blocks wrapped in aluminum foil.
Lead conservator Lucia Lopez-Polin gathered more than 200 pieces of skull as the first step in facial reconstruction for the recently released Netflix documentary “Secrets of the Neanderthals.”
Pomeroy said the task felt like a “high-stakes 3D puzzle”, especially because the fragments were very soft, “similar in consistency to a biscuit dipped in tea”.
The reconstructed skull was then 3D printed, allowing paleoartists and identical twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis in the Netherlands to complete the reconstruction with layers of muscle and skin fabricated for the documentary, which was produced by the BBC Studios Science Unit.
Pomeroy said Neanderthal skulls looked very different from humans, “with huge eyebrows and a lack of chin.”
But she said the recreated face “suggests that these differences were not so striking in life,” highlighting the crossover between Neanderthals and humans “to the extent that almost all people alive today still have Neanderthal DNA.”
The BBC reported that researchers are confident that the Neanderthal is a woman. Because no pelvic bones were recovered, archaeologists relied on certain dominant proteins found in tooth enamel that are associated with female genetics. The small stature of the skeleton also supports the interpretation.
