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Shanidar Z has a low forehead, wide cheekbones and a calm demeanor. With her flowing black hair and lines between her eyes that look equal parts joy and worry, she could be someone’s wise grandmother.
His face is a reconstruction, however. His skull was found in a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2018, where it had been since his body was placed there 75,000 years ago. The rest of their species would disappear a few tens of thousands of years after that. Shanidar Z is a Neanderthal.
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Last week, a team of British archaeologists revealed the reconstructed face of the woman named after the Shanidar cave where her skull was found. Her remains were discovered in 1960 by American archaeologist Ralph Solecki, who found the remains of at least 10 Neanderthals.
The way the bodies were grouped together and the presence of fragments of ancient pollen led him to suggest that the cave could have been the site of a prehistoric funeral, complete with flowers. But even if that weren’t the case, in recent years scientists have been rewriting the history of humanity’s closest relatives, who were once considered brutal, club-wielding “cavemen.”
Professor Chris Hunt, a member of the team, told the AFP news agency that the pollen that gave rise to Solecki’s controversial theory may have come from bees burying themselves in the cave floor. But he said the remains of a partially paralyzed Neanderthal in the same location suggest a degree of empathy not always associated with the species.
“There was a huge reassessment, which 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,” he said. “That tells us there was compassion.”
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He added: “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.”
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Shanidar Z, believed to be in her early forties when she died, was placed in a sleeping position beneath a huge upright stone marker that archaeologists believe was used as an identifier, to allow wandering Neanderthals to return to the same burial site. their dead. At least five bodies were identified in a cluster, buried over a period of at least several hundred years, just behind the stone.
His skull, considered the best-preserved Neanderthal find of this century, was flattened until it was just two centimeters thick, possibly due to a rockfall relatively soon after his death.
Team member and paleoanthropologist Emma 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.”
Lead conservator Lucia Lopez-Polin gathered more than 200 pieces of skull, which were then 3D printed to allow paleoartists (and identical twins) Adrie and Alfons Kennis in the Netherlands to complete the reconstruction with layers of fabricated muscle and skin.
The complete reconstruction can be seen in the new Netflix documentary Secrets of the Neanderthals, produced by the BBC Studios Science Unit and narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart.
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