Meet Shanidar, a woman who lived 75,000 years ago

AUK team of archaeologists yesterday revealed the reconstructed face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman.

Named Shanidar Z after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where her skull was found in 2018, the latest discovery has led experts to probe the mystery of the fortysomething Neanderthal woman laid to rest beneath a huge vertical stone marker.

The lower part of her skeleton is believed to have been excavated in 1960 during groundbreaking excavations by American archaeologist Ralph Solecki.

‘Flower burial’

His discovery of a cluster of bodies with one surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen led him to controversially argue that this was evidence of funerary rituals with the dead placed on a bed of flowers. Political difficulties meant it took around five decades for a team from Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores universities to be allowed back to the site in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq.

More empathetic?

Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who led the excavations at Shanidar cave, told AFP the team had “never expected to get more Neanderthals”.

Latest research Professor Chris Hunt of John Moores suggested that the species were more empathetic than previously thought.