A team of archaeologists in the UK showcased the reconstructed face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman on Thursday, challenging the stereotype of Neanderthals as brutish and unsophisticated.
Named Shanidar Z after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where her skull was discovered in 2018, this latest finding is prompting experts to delve into the mystery of the Neanderthal woman in her forties, buried in a sleeping position beneath a large vertical stone marker.
While the lower part of her skeleton was excavated in 1960 by American archaeologist Ralph Solecki during pioneering digs that revealed multiple Neanderthal remains, it took nearly five decades for a team from Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores universities to return to the site due to political complications.
Solecki’s discovery of a group of bodies, one surrounded by ancient pollen, led to the controversial suggestion that Neanderthals may have had funeral rituals, possibly involving flowers.
The sophisticated burial practices and the preservation of Shanidar Z’s skull to an exceptional degree, flattened to a thickness of two centimeters (0.7 inches) shortly after her death, shed new light on the lives of Neanderthals.
The last Neanderthals disappeared mysteriously about 40,000 years ago, shortly after the arrival of modern humans on Earth.
Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who spearheaded the excavations at Shanidar cave, expressed surprise at the unexpected discovery, stating, “We never expected to find more Neanderthals.”
