‘DELIBERATELY BURIED’ SKELETON OF MIDDLE-AGED HUMAN ANCESTOR FOUND IN IRAQ
The skeleton of a middle-aged Neanderthal that lived 70,000 years ago and was ‘deliberately buried’ by the ancient human ancestor has been found in Iraq.
The remains — consisting of a crushed but complete skull, upper thorax and both hands — were recently unearthed at the Shanidar Cave site on Bradost Mountain.
This find represents the first articulated Neanderthal skeleton — with its bones still arranged in their original positions — to be dug up in over 20 years.
Although its gender is yet to be determined, early analysis suggests that the skeleton — dubbed Shanidar Z — has the teeth of a ‘middle-to-older-aged adult’.
The Shanidar Cave site previously yielded the remains of ten other Neanderthal individuals which were excavated from the site in the late fifties and early sixties.
This included the then-famous ‘flower burial’ that sparked debate as to whether the ancient humans were culturally sophisticated enough to perform death rituals.
The discovery of the Shanidar Z remains — which appeared to be laid to rest with a stone supporting its head — are the latest evidence in support of this notion.
Located around 500 miles north of Baghdad, Shanidar Cave was also home to the remains of 10 other Neanderthals that were dug up around 60 years ago, revealing that one of the skeletons, Shanidar 4, was surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen.
The presence of this pollen was seen by some archaeologists as evidence that these hominid species not only buried their dead, but did so with flowers — challenging the widely-held belief that Neanderthals were dumb and animalistic.
At the time, the discovery of the pollen captured the public imagination and the Shanidar Cave became famous as the so-called ‘flower burial’ site.
The researchers had reopened this dig site to collect new sediment samples.
‘So much research on how Neanderthals treated their dead has to involve returning to finds from 60 or even a hundred years ago, when archaeological techniques were more limited,’ said paper author Emma Pomeroy of the University of Cambridge.
‘That only ever gets you so far,’ she added.
‘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.’
Paper author and cultural palaeoecologist Chris Hunt of at the Liverpool John Moores University described Shanidar Z as ‘a truly spectacular find’.