After her body was excavated in 2018, a group of archaeologists from the University of Cambridge recreated the visage of the 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman.
The skull of a Neanderthal was found in an Iraqi cave, an area where the species was known to bury its dead. The location might provide evidence that Neanderthals were more emotionally sophisticated and compassionate than previously believed.
The group discovered Shanidar Z, the Neanderthal, in a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, a mountainous area of northern Iraq. The University of Cambridge has discovered that the Neanderthal species frequently traveled back to Iraqi Kurdistan to bury their dead.
The school in Cambridge, England stated that the reason the cave gained notoriety was because numerous Neanderthals were discovered there in the late 1950s, their bodies appearing to have been buried successively.
Given that Neanderthals are thought to have gone extinct more than 40,000 years ago, new fossil finds are “few and far between,” according to Cambridge.
The cranium of Shanidar Z suggests potential intermarriage.
The palaeo-anthropologist Emma Pomeroy of the Department of Archaeology at Cambridge states, “The skulls of Neanderthals and humans look very different.”
According to Pomeroy’s statement in the release, “Neanderthal skulls have huge brow ridges and lack chins, with a projecting midface that results in more prominent noses.” “But the recreated face suggests those differences were not so stark in life.”
According to Pomeroy, the fact that the craniums of Neanderthals and humans are different may suggest that interbreeding had place thousands of years ago. “Almost everyone alive today still has Neanderthal DNA,” if this is accurate.
Five-foot-tall Shanidar Z was in her mid-forties.
According to Cambridge, an analysis of Shanidar’s remains indicates that she was a 5-foot-5 woman who was most likely in her mid-40s. The school also said that the team’s observations of her body and tooth enamel allowed them to identify her age and sex.
“Some front teeth worn down to the root,” the researchers from Cambridge found.
How was Shanidar Z excavated by the Cambridge archeological team?
Only the upper half of Shanidar Z’s body was discovered by the Cambridge team that discovered her remains, and they think the lower half was removed during an excavation in 1960.
Researchers speculate that Shanidar Z’s head was crushed by rockfall not too long after her passing. The school further stated that the cranium was “then compacted further by tens of thousands of years of sediment.”
According to the Cambridge statement, “the skull was flattened to about two centimeters thick when archaeologists found it.”
Shanidar Z was extracted by the researchers in “dozens of small foil-wrapped blocks from under seven and a half meters of soil and rock within the heart of the cave,” as Cambridge puts it.
How was the visage of Shanidar Z recreated?
“Took micro-CT scans of each block before gradually diluting the glue and using the scans to guide extraction of bone fragments,” the university reported that researchers did in the lab at Cambridge.
Lead conservator Lucía López-Polín stitched together more than 200 fragments of Shanidar Z’s skull to return it to its natural form, according to Cambrid.ge.
The bone, which can be quite soft and have the consistency of a biscuit dipped in tea, is stabilized by re-adding glue and consolidant after each skull fragment has been carefully cleaned, according to Pomeroy. It resembles a risky 3D jigsaw puzzle. Processing a single block can take more than two weeks.
After the Shanidar was rebuilt, the skull was surface scanned and 3D printed, according to Cambridge, which served as “the basis of a reconstructed head” made by paleoartists Adrie and Alfons Kennis. The school claimed that the identical twins constructed layers of artificial skin and muscle to expose a face.
‘Neanderthals have had a bad press’
The researchers discovered a “huge vertical rock” inside the cave where Shanidar was unearthed, and they believe this rock acted as a landmark for Neanderthals to identify a specific location for several burials, according to the school.
The professor from Cambridge who oversaw the cave excavation, Graeme Barker, stated, “Neanderthals have had a bad press ever since the first ones were found over 150 years ago.”
The school stated that Shanidar Z’s remains in the cave “show signs of an empathetic species” since she was leaned against her side, her left hand curled under her head, and a boulder served as a tiny cushion behind her head. The rock might have been placed there, according to the archaeologists.
According to Barker, “Our findings suggest that the Shanidar Neanderthals might have been contemplating death and its aftermath in ways not all that dissimilar from their closest evolutionary cousins – ourselves.”
