Researchers have reconstructed a crushed skull from a neanderthal who lived about 75 thousand years ago. They found the remains in the Shanidar cave in Kurdistan Iraqi. The Neanderthal found was called Shanidar Z, in reference to the name of the cave.
Analysis of the site suggests that the ancient Neanderthal had a stone behind her head, as if it were a pillow, and one of her hands curled up against her face. She was laid to rest in a ravine formed by running water, which was further excavated to accommodate her body.
The remains of Shanidar Z are highlighted in the documentary on Netflix Secrets of the Neanderthalsproduced by the BBC, which premieres this Thursday, 2. The production follows a team led by scientists from the universities of Cambridge and Liverpool John Moore in one of the returns to the cave where the remains were found.
Scientists believe that the skull found in 2018 is actually part of an individual excavated from the same site in the early 1960s. The Shanidar Cave became famous in the 1950s, when several Neanderthals were discovered there that appear to have been buried in succession .
Shanidar Z’s body is also part of the group. But, until the discovery of the skull in 2018, it had been 50 years since anything related to this species had been found at the site.
Skull reconstruction
When scientists found Shanidar Z, his skull was just two centimeters thick. It was flattened by a falling rock followed by thousands of years of sedimentation. The team had to extract Shanidar Z, which was under 7.5 meters of soil and rock in the heart of the cave, into dozens of blocks wrapped in aluminum foil.
Around 200 pieces of skulls needed to be glued to hand to return to its original shape, including the upper and lower jaw.
According to Emma Pomeroy, a paleoanthropologist at the Cambridge Department of Archeology who appears in the documentary, the bones can be very soft, as if they were a cookie wet.
“It’s like a high-stakes 3D puzzle. A single block can take more than fifteen days to process,” he says.
Afterwards, the skull’s surface was scanned and printed in 3D. With this foundation, paleoartists Adrie and Alfons Kennis built layers of muscle and skin to reveal a face.
New analysis from the teeth suggests that Shanidar Z was in his 40s, a young age for prehistoric times. There were no Neanderthal pelvic bones, so the team also analyzed tooth proteins to determine sex. Its size, around 1.5 meters, also indicates that it was female.
However, a study published last year led by Liverpool John Moore University professor Chris Hunt claims that the pollen came from bees digging the cave floor, not burial flowers. Remnants in the cave show other empathetic forms of Neanderthals.
One of those buried, for example, had a paralyzed arm, deafness and head trauma, but lived for a long time. Therefore, the hypothesis is that he received care.
“We can see that Neanderthals are returning to a particular place to bury their dead. This could be decades or even a thousand years apart. Is it coincidence or is it intentional and what makes them return?”, reflects the paleo-anthropologist Emma Pomeroy.
