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75,000 years ago, a woman in her 40s was buried in a cave and left to rest in a hole that could accommodate her body. His left hand was folded under his head, and a stone may have been placed behind his head as a pillow.
The woman, known as Shanidar Z after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where she was found in 2018, was a Neanderthal, a type of ancient human who disappeared about 40,000 years ago.
Scientists examining the remains meticulously assembled the skull from 200 bone fragments, a process that took nine months. They used the contours of the face and skull to guide the reconstruction to understand what the woman looked like.
The stunning reconstruction is featured in “Secrets of the Neanderthals,” a new documentary produced by the BBC for Netflix and available to stream Thursday.
Dr. Dr., who discovered the skeleton and is a paleoanthropologist and associate professor at the Department of Archeology at the University of Cambridge. Emma Pomeroy said the skulls of Neanderthals, which lack prominent eyebrow ridges and jaws, looked different from the skulls of our own species, Homo sapiens. new movie. Shanidar Z’s facial reconstruction shows that these differences may not be so stark in life, Pomeroy said.
“There’s some artistic license there, but at the heart of it is the actual skull and the actual data about what we know about (these) people,” he said.
“He actually has a pretty big face for his height,” Pomeroy added. “He’s got some pretty big eyebrow ridges that we don’t usually see, but I think if he were wearing modern clothes you probably wouldn’t look twice.”
Neanderthals lived in Europe, the Middle East, and the Central Asian Mountains for about 300,000 years, overlapping with modern humans by about 30,000 years. DNA analysis taken from modern humans revealed that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens occasionally encountered each other and mated during this period.
new analysis
When Pomeroy first excavated the skeleton, its gender was not immediately obvious because only the upper half of the body was preserved. It lacked the described pelvic bones. Initially examining the remains, the team relied on a relatively new technique that involved sequencing proteins in tooth enamel to determine the sex of Shanidar Z, who is revealed for the first time in the documentary.
By comparing the length and diameter of the arm bones with data from modern humans, researchers from Cambridge and Liverpool universities estimated that the specimen was around 1.5 meters tall. Analysis of wear and tear on teeth and bones showed that he was in his mid-40s at the time of his death.
“It’s a reasonable guess, but we can’t be 100% sure that they’re not actually older,” Pomeroy said. “We can say that this person was someone who lived a relatively long life. They were probably very important to that society in terms of their knowledge and life experiences.”
The cave where Shanidar Z is buried is well known among archaeologists because a Neanderthal grave discovered there in 1960 led researchers to believe that Neanderthals may have buried their dead with flowers; This was the first challenge to the widespread view that ancient people were stupid and rude. . But subsequent research by Pomeroy’s team cast doubt on the flower burial theory.
Instead, they suspect that the pollen found among the graves may have arrived via pollinating bees.
Yet over the years, scientists have found increasing evidence of Neanderthals’ intelligence, sophistication, and sophistication, including art, rope, and tools.
Neanderthals returned to Shanidar Cave many times to rest their dead. The research revealed that the remains of 10 Neanderthals were unearthed at the site, half of which were deliberately buried repeatedly.
Research suggests that Neanderthals may not have honored their dead with bouquets of flowers, but the inhabitants of Shanidar Cave were likely an empathetic species. For example, a male Neanderthal buried there was deaf and suffered a paralyzing arm and head injury that likely left him partially blind, but he lived for a long time, so he must have been cared for, according to the study.
Pomeroy said Shanidar Z was the first Neanderthal found in the cave in more than 50 years, but more discoveries could still be made from the site. During the filming of the documentary in 2022, Pomeroy uncovered a left scapula, several ribs, and a right hand belonging to another Neanderthal.
“I think our current interpretation is that this probably belonged to a single individual and was then disturbed.”
skull reconstruction
Pomeroy described the reconstruction of Shanidar Z’s skull, which was crushed relatively soon after his death, as a “high-stakes 3-D puzzle.” The fossilized bones were hardened with a glue-like substance, extracted into small blocks of cave sediment and wrapped in foil before the researchers sent them to the University of Cambridge for analysis.
In the Cambridge lab, researchers took micro-CT scans of each block and used the scans to guide the removal of bone fragments. Pomeroy’s colleague, archaeological conservator Dr. Lucía López-Polín assembled the eye from more than 200 skull fragments to restore it to its original shape.
The team scanned and 3D printed the reconstructed skull, which formed the basis of the reconstructed head created by Danish paleoartists Adrie and Alfons Kennis, twin brothers who created layers of fabricated muscle and skin to reveal Shanidar Z’s face.
The reconstruction helps “bridge the gap between anatomy and 75,000 years of time,” Pomeroy said.
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