Return to Shanidar Cave: Neanderthal Burial Site or Not?

Figure 1: Sketch created in 2018 of the Shanidar 5 Individual, suggestive of intentional body placement (Pomeroy, E.)

There is much confirmed knowledge concerning Neanderthals, such as the evidence that they interbred with Archaic Homo sapiens and they also interbred with Denisovans, but there remains some controversy about their cultural practices, such as whether they intentionally buried their dead.  This controversy began in the last 20^th century with the “Flower Burial” discovered at the Shanidar Cave, located in Kurdish Iraq.  Over the decades there has been considerable debate and reanalysis of the evidence discussed in the 1950s-1960s, but new evidence may provide the evidence to potentially end this controversy.  This blog post will address the original and new evidence to address this situation.

 

Ralph Solecki excavated the Shanidar Cave between 1951 and 1960.  During his trench excavations of the cave floor he discovered ten Neanderthal remains dating to the Paleolithic Period, specifically from 45,000 years ago.  A total of ten incomplete individuals were recovered, and these included individuals from infancy to adulthood.  The adults represented both males and females (remember, juveniles cannot accurately be sexed).  Several of these individuals provided amazing insights into Neanderthal life.  There was one (Shanidar 1) who suffered debilitating injuries that left him deaf, partially blind, and unable to use one of his arms, yet he survived a long time in spite of these injuries.  This could have only been done with the care and support of others around him, demonstrating the Neanderthal’s ability to care for sick members of their species.  Another individual (Shanidar 3) had punctured ribs, which is evidence of interpersonal violence.  The most important individual (Shanidar 4), however, is also the most controversial.  This was an adult male who was found in the fetal position, and there was a large clump of flower pollen with his burial, which led Solecki and the paleobotanist that studied the flower pollen conclude that the Shanidar 4 individual was intentionally buried.  At that time this was the first evidence of intentional burial among our hominid ancestors. 

 

This evidence was immediately scrutinized, and the nay-sayers critics were vocal with their dissent.  They claimed that the pollen could have gotten into the cave through non-human means, such as wind or rodents.  The excavation methods were also called into question, particularly as part of the cave floor was removed through a method of plastering the soil and remains and then excavated in Baghdad.  The potential for contamination increased, as did the doubters.  Solecki and his team were unable to return to Shanidar to collect additional evidence, leaving the matter of the “Flower Burial” (as the Shanidar 5 individual was eventually labelled) unresolved.

 

In 2014 a team of British scholars were invited to continue the excavations at Shanidar Cave.  Due to political unrest they were unable to do so until the following year, and their excavations continued for a number of years following.  The purpose of their work was to examine the newly discovered paleoenvironmental and cultural evidence by using modern and updated investigative techniques in order to reassess of the original Neanderthal discoveries. 

 

The team did not expect to discover additional Neanderthal remains, but they did ultimately do that in the 2017 excavation season.  At that time they discovered the missing remains of Solecki’s Shanidar 5 burial, which was an adult male who died somewhere between 40 and 50 years of age.  This shed light on the intentional burial debate.  First, this individual was dated to far later than the previously dated individuals in the original excavation.  This individual was from 70,000 years ago.  Also, the remains were largely articulated, meaning they were together in their original placement, and they represented the arms, legs, crushed skull, and pelvic areas.  The placement of the hands, head, and remaining body parts suggested that this individual may have also been intentionally positioned (Figure 1), much like the Shanidar 4 Flower Burial, albeit in a different way.  Lastly, there appeared to have been at least one grave good placed with the individual, which were two lithics that seemed to cap the burial.  There were also animal bone splinters found in the same layer as the Neanderthal remains, but it is unclear how or why these were present in that layer. 

 

Ultimately, the team evaluated this evidence and compared it to various other types of evidence that has been used to support the idea that intentional burial practices were conducted by our hominid ancestors.  The team ultimately concluded that these Neanderthals may have been conducting some sort of mortuary traditions, although it is unclear what types and the motivations for them.  They further cautioned reach conclusions for all Neanderthals.  They noted that there are regional cultural variations among Neanderthal populations, suggesting that there may have been no pan-Neanderthal burial traditions.  They also cautioned against comparing Neanderthal cultural traditions to that of modern human traditions.  There has been thousands of years between Neanderthals and modern humans, and that means there has been a significant amount of cultural change over that time.  Therefore it is incorrect to make direct comparisons between them, but the Shanidar Neanderthals may very well have been practicing some sort of cultural rituals or traditions concerning their dead.  The specifics of which remain unknown.

 

References

Lewsey, F. (n.d.). Shanidar Z: What Did Neanderthals Do With Their Dead? Retrieved from University of Cambridge: https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/shanidarz

Pomeroy, E. H., Burke, A., Farr, L., Foley, R., French, C., Frumkin, A., . . . Barker, G. (2020). Issues of theory and method in the analysis of Paleolithic mortuary behavior: A view from Shanidar Cave. Evolutionary Anthropology, 263-279.

Pomeroy, E., Bennett, P., Hunt, C. O., Reynolds, T., Farr, L., Frouin, M., . . . Barker, G. (2020). New Neanderthal remains associated with the ‘flower burial' at Shanidar Cave. Antiquity, 11-26.

Pomeroy, E., Mirazón Lahr, M., Crivellaro, F., Farr, L., Reynolds, T., & Hunt, C. (2017). Newly-discovered Neanderthal remains from Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan, and their attribution to Shanidar 5. . Journal of Human Evolution, 102-118.