The Shanidar Cave Neanderthals

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Meredith Johnson: This is Origin
Stories, the Leakey Foundation podcast.

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I’m Meredith Johnson.

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In this episode, we’re exploring
a one of a kind fossil site that

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changed our understanding of
Neanderthals, their way of life, and

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even how they treated their dead.

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Before we get into the episode, I
want to talk a little bit about the

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Thank you so much.

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Now here’s our story of one of the most
important Neanderthal sites in the world.

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In the mountain foothills of Kurdistan
in northern Iraq, there’s a limestone

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cave that has sheltered people
for tens of thousands of years.

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It’s called Shanidar Cave.

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A site where in the mid 1950s
archeologist Ralph Solecki uncovered

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the remains of 10 Neanderthals.

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These skeletons told a surprising
story of the Neanderthals who

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lived there, cared for each other
and possibly buried their dead.

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The discoveries at Shannon, a cave
challenged fundamental ideas of

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who Neanderthals were and what
separates our species from theirs.

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And ever since anyone studying archeology
or human evolution has learned about Ralph

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Solecki and the Shannon AR Neanderthals.

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Graeme Barker: Ralph Solecki
was an extraordinary, tough man.

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He stood on the landmine in the
second World War and amazing.

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He didn’t lose his foot.

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He always had a limp afterwards.

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He was very, very tough.

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Meredith Johnson: That’s
archeologist Graeme Barker.

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He’s a Leakey Foundation grantee and
Disney professor of Archeology emeritus

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at the University of Cambridge in England.

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Ralph Solecki first came to Iraq
as a grad student after the war.

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He was searching for a site
where he could hopefully find

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evidence of ancient human life.

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Over a deep stretch of time.

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Locals told him about Shanidar a
cave in the mountains to the north up

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near the Turkish and Iranian borders.

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Graeme Barker: When, when Ralph Solecki
saw the cave, people were using the cave.

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There were shepherds living in it, and
they were, they would come there in the

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winter months from the high mountains.

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Meredith Johnson: The cave is
very big, like an aircraft hanger

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in the side of the mountain.

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Graeme Barker: It was a
light, airy cave facing south.

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Wonderful visibility, fantastic,
wonderful views down to the main valley

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of the, the greater Zab river that
flows out onto the Mesopotamian Plains.

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And he could see from the the geology
what looked like the likelihood of

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a deep sequence of soil sediment.

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Meredith Johnson: It was exactly
what Solecki was looking for.

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With an agreement between the Iraqi
government and the Smithsonian, where

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Solecki was an associate curator.

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He started work at Shanidar doing five
field expeditions between 1951 and 1960.

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Graeme Barker: He laid out a trench,
basically straight down the middle

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of the cave, and there are pictures
from his first excavations when as

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the trench started to go down of
people in the houses peering out,

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looking down into his excavation.

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Meredith Johnson: Solecki and the local
Kurdish men he worked with continued

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to excavate their trench until it went
down 14 meters through layers of time.

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It was archeology on a grand scale.

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They found stone tools, animal bones, and
signs of ancient hearth fires, and then

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they started to find neanderthal bones.

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A lot of them.

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In 1953, Ralph Solecki’s team found the
first Shannon d Neanderthal, a baby.

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Eventually, they uncovered the
crushed skeletal remains of 10

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Neanderthal men, women, and children,

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Graeme Barker: and he thought
that some of them had been killed

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accidental death by Rockfall.

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And indeed there are massive rocks.

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Some of them the size of well
SUVs and even buses that have come

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down from the roof of the cave.

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And we can see through the sequence.

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Meredith Johnson: At Shanidar,
they numbered the individuals they

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found Shanidar one, Shanidar two,
Shanidar three with the dating

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methods available in the 1950s.

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Solecki dated these Neanderthals to
around 45,000 to 50,000 years, but it

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wasn’t just the number of remains or the
age of the remains that was remarkable.

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Emma Pomeroy: A couple of the
individuals he found had evidence

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of really significant injuries,
um, and disability, and yet they

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survived at least some period of time.

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Meredith Johnson: This is Emma Pomeroy.

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She’s a paleoanthropologist
and a human bone specialist at

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the University of Cambridge.

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She works with Graeme Barker and
she’s closely studied Ralph Solecki’s

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work and the Shanidar Neanderthals.

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Emma Pomeroy: For example, Shanidar one,
he’d had a major injury to his head, which

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had probably made him blind in one eye.

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He was also paralyzed down
one arm and had probably lost

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that arm just above the elbow.

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So he’d lost a lot of that, that
right arm, and couldn’t use what he

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did have still, uh, he had arthritis.

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He had an infection in one of his
collarbone, and yet he’d survived to

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a pretty good age for Neanderthal,
and the evidence indicates that

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he’d suffered some of these major
injuries as a, a young adult,

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Meredith Johnson: Shanidar one
would’ve had a lot of trouble

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getting around, let alone hunting,
foraging, and fending for himself.

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Yet scientists estimate he lived
to be between 35 to 45 years old,

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Emma Pomeroy: and so this was argued to,
so actually there must have been some

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kind of compassion and care and support
from fellow group members for him to

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have lived the kind of life he did.

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Meredith Johnson: Another individual,
Shanidar three also showed signs of having

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healed from some pretty serious wounds.

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Emma Pomeroy: He was found having had
a puncture wound in his rib cage from

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some kind of stone tool, essentially
from some kind of projectile, and

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that had partly healed, so he’d
at least survived a few months.

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Meredith Johnson: Shanidar three
was between 40 and 50 when he died.

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Old for a Neanderthal.

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His teeth were worn down
almost to the roots.

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And the severity of she Arthur
Three’s wounds suggested he

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would’ve needed some help from
other Neanderthals to stay alive.

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Emma Pomeroy: And that really challenged
this idea that Neanderthals were

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incapable of compassion and caring
for one another because the evidence

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suggested that actually they were

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Meredith Johnson: Ralph Solecki
and his team’s discoveries.

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At Shanidar Cave didn’t only
change what we thought about how

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Neanderthals treated the living.

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Emma Pomeroy: The other big
thing at Shanidar Cave was the

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evidence for Neanderthal burial
and the treatment of the dead.

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And this has been a particularly
controversial area or or focused area of

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discussion about Neanderthals and what
their abilities were, how they thought,

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how they related to one another, because.

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If we’re finding evidence that they are
caring for their dead, again, it shows

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that idea of compassion, that ability
to, to mourn, to perhaps empathize.

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So perhaps most famous at Shadow
Cave was the individual number,

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Shanidar Four, which has also
been known as the flower burial.

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Meredith Johnson: Shanidar
four was somewhere between 30

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and 45 years old when he died.

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He was found laying on his left side,
all crouched up in a fetal position

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when Ralph Solecki and his team found
Shanidar four in 1960, they could

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see there were other bones packed
in around the fragile skeleton.

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So they cut in through the trench and
removed the whole block around him,

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soil, skeleton, and all up out of the
ground to study in detail in a lab.

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They protected the block by
encasing it in wood and plaster.

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Graeme Barker: And it took
five or six guys to get it

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up the ladder and get it out.

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The extraordinary pictures
of how they did this.

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So they got this, this body in its
earth, and they got it down the

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mountain and onto the roof of a car
and drove it to Baghdad and, and

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jig, jig, jig, jig, jig to get there.

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Meredith Johnson: That’s
Graeme Barker again.

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Graeme Barker: They worked out
that there was number four.

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And there were a whole set of bones
that, that they identified as another

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Neanderthal, which they called
number six, and there were bones

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left over, which didn’t fit either,
which they called number eight.

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Meredith Johnson: The team also took
samples of the sediments throughout

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the cave and from around the bodies,
which was very forward thinking at

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the time, and they found something
quite unexpected from the sediment

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in the block around Shanidar four.

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Emma Pomeroy: The pollen specialist
that Solecki was working with

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Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, she found
clusters of pollen in those samples.

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She had lots of samples
elsewhere in the cave, but she

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wasn’t finding these clusters.

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And because the pollen was in these
little clusters, it suggested that

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actually whole flowers had been there.

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And she and, and Ralph
Solecki argued that.

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The only reason you’d have whole flowers
there right under the body was that the

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body being placed on a bed of flowers.

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And of course that’s something that’s
really a behavior that we can relate

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to right in, in our kind of modern
western ways of, of treating the dead.

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We often put flowers as, um,
ways of memorializing people as

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part of the funerary process.

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Solecki was able to argue,
actually, you know what?

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They weren’t so different from us.

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There’s evidence here of the
mourning and caring for their dead.

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Meredith Johnson: This discovery captured
the public imagination and sparked debate

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that bloomed for over half a century,
did Neanderthals bury their dead?

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What did it mean?

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Did they really pick flowers and
use them in funeral practices?

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If not, how did the flowers get there?

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Emma Pomeroy: It was very controversial.

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His interpretation, other people later
said, oh, well, it’s down to borrowing

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rodents, dragging these flowers in.

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It’s contamination from the workmen.

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Because Solecki himself says that they,
some of ’em like to tuck flowers into

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their belts while they’re working.

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So it, not everyone has accepted it, but
it has been an important part of this

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whole process of rethinking neers holes.

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And I think it becomes.

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Hard to imagine that they can
have been so vastly different from

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us in, in their behavior in, um,
the things they were capable of.

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Graeme Barker: People say, did
Neanderthals do this or that?

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Well, Neanderthals were around
from 400,000 years ago at least.

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Until 40,000 years ago, and they’re around
from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains

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in Russia and from northern England and
Germany down to Shanidar, you know, over

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this vast area and this vast timescale.

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They must have done many in varied things.

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Shanidar started the process,
which has gone on ever since of us.

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Archeologists having to grapple with
the fact that Neanderthals are much

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more complicated than were thought.

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Meredith Johnson: At the end
of the 1960 field season.

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Ralph Solecki assumed he’d just keep
exploring Shanidar and learning about the

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many and varied things Neanderthals did.

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The site had already yielded
so much it could keep him busy

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for the rest of his career.

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Graeme Barker: He never backfilled it the
way he intended because, you know, the

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end of an excavation, you’re meant to fill
up the trench to protect the archaeology.

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And part of the trench was
backfilled the deepest part,

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but much of the upper trench.

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He, he couldn’t backfill, uh,
because he was intended to go back.

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Meredith Johnson: But the decades after
1960 were times of political upheaval,

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war and trauma in Iraq and Kurdistan.

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The Kurdish people were targets
of violence and genocide.

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It was not a time for archaeology.

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Even though Ralph Solecki lived
to be 101, he never could go back.

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And for the next 50 plus years,
Shanidar Cave was closed off to science.

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By around 2010, things became stable
enough for people in Kurdistan to

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turn attention to its places of
deep cultural and world heritage.

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Like Shanidar

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Graeme Barker: indeed Out of the blue.

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I got this invitation from
the representative of the

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Kurdistan Regional government.

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Would I be interested to re dig Shanidar
Cave, which was an extraordinary

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offer and I, I got hold of Ralph
Solecki and, and emailed him and

00:13:45.585 –> 00:13:48.615
broadly asked for his blessing,
you know, to go back to the site.

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And he wrote an incredibly
encouraging email that this is 2011.

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He was enthusiastic, and at the
end of it, he said, and by the

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way, the flowers at Shanidar in
spring are absolutely beautiful.

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Meredith Johnson: So decades after
Solecki Graeme Barker began a new

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Shanidar cave project, it was a
collaboration between the directorates

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of Antiquities of Kurdistan and Soren
Province and the University of Cambridge.

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Graeme Barker: I went out in that
year with the key colleagues.

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Uh, Chris Hunt and Tim Reynolds who
were going to be the co-investigators.

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We met all the various archeologists,
the antiquity service, the

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ministers, and so on and so forth.

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And we then went back in 2014 with
the money, a grant and the permit.

00:14:35.865 –> 00:14:39.855
We did survey work around the
cave and then we went out again

00:14:39.855 –> 00:14:42.075
in the summer and that’s when ISIS
attacked, so we had to come out.

00:14:42.075 –> 00:14:45.825
So we didn’t actually
start excavating till 2015.

00:14:46.425 –> 00:14:51.464
Unknown: Okay guys, this is the
excavation area that we have now.

00:14:52.635 –> 00:15:01.935
This is trench W. Um, you’ve got
a section pin there, which goes

00:15:01.935 –> 00:15:04.334
to that one in sec in the shoring,

00:15:06.495 –> 00:15:11.625
and the section on this side needs to be
updated as you go down through the layers.

00:15:11.954 –> 00:15:13.398
It’s very Paul Benetti.

00:15:13.902 –> 00:15:14.742
Meredith Johnson: back in the cave.

00:15:15.162 –> 00:15:16.782
They expected they’d see the trench.

00:15:16.782 –> 00:15:21.342
So lucky had left uncovered, but no,
in the decades since his last field

00:15:21.342 –> 00:15:25.752
season, people had been using the
cave, living in it, and sheltering

00:15:25.782 –> 00:15:27.462
hundreds of goats and cows there.

00:15:28.242 –> 00:15:32.472
And of course, a nice big trench in
the center is perfect for tossing

00:15:32.472 –> 00:15:34.452
your ash and dung and rubbish.

00:15:34.842 –> 00:15:40.212
Graeme Barker: We’ve had to clear out
that post 1960s rubbish and sometimes

00:15:40.212 –> 00:15:46.662
pre 1960s backfill to expose the walls
of his trench and then doing to the

00:15:46.692 –> 00:15:50.412
walls of his trench what he couldn’t do
in terms of the techniques available.

00:15:51.597 –> 00:15:55.977
The old excavation has informed the
new and the new has informed the old,

00:15:56.457 –> 00:16:01.587
and there’s a conversation going on
between that past and present work.

00:16:02.917 –> 00:16:05.487
Meredith Johnson: Graeme and his
collaborators brought new methods and

00:16:05.487 –> 00:16:10.287
new technology to help answer lingering
questions about the Shanidar Neanderthals

00:16:10.557 –> 00:16:15.537
and the controversial flower burial, but
they also brought their own questions

00:16:15.837 –> 00:16:19.347
about the relationship between people
and the landscape around Shanidar.

00:16:19.782 –> 00:16:22.482
And about how and why
Neanderthals disappeared.

00:16:23.472 –> 00:16:27.342
Emma Pomeroy: The point of the project
was never to find new Neanderthal remains.

00:16:27.552 –> 00:16:33.462
So when some did come up, I was asked if I
would join the team just to lead on that,

00:16:33.702 –> 00:16:38.202
um, aspect, you know, the excavation,
the conservation, the study, um, and

00:16:38.202 –> 00:16:40.482
the publication of of those remains.

00:16:40.702 –> 00:16:43.282
Meredith Johnson: Graeme and his team
had found little pieces of Shanidar

00:16:43.302 –> 00:16:45.492
five from Solecki’s original dig.

00:16:46.397 –> 00:16:49.427
And they needed someone with Emma
Pomeroy’s expertise in bones.

00:16:50.417 –> 00:16:53.087
So she came to Shanidar
in the spring of 2016.

00:16:53.657 –> 00:16:55.427
Emma Pomeroy: I thought, wow,
this is an amazing opportunity

00:16:55.427 –> 00:16:57.947
to go see a really iconic site.

00:16:57.952 –> 00:17:03.347
And, and of course we ended up finding an
awful lot more than, um, we anticipated.

00:17:03.717 –> 00:17:06.297
But yeah, no idea it would
turn into what it has.

00:17:06.537 –> 00:17:09.327
Meredith Johnson: Not long after
Emma joined the team, she made.

00:17:09.327 –> 00:17:13.287
What would become the biggest discovery
of the new Shanidar project so far

00:17:13.317 –> 00:17:16.077
Emma Pomeroy: it just so happened
that on that, uh, one particular day,

00:17:16.077 –> 00:17:19.407
you know, I’d been down at, at the
dick house helping with the sorting,

00:17:19.437 –> 00:17:22.167
you know, processing basically all
the sediment samples, getting all the

00:17:22.167 –> 00:17:25.017
little bits of charcoal and the little
mammal bones, all that kind of thing.

00:17:25.437 –> 00:17:28.677
And I’ve been up on site just to
see how things were progressing.

00:17:28.707 –> 00:17:31.317
The directors were chatting about
other things, so I was just helping

00:17:31.317 –> 00:17:33.597
to dry sieve some of the backfill.

00:17:34.647 –> 00:17:40.827
And as I was doing that, um, a few hand
bones came out from what I was sitting.

00:17:41.277 –> 00:17:43.977
So of course I said, you know,
okay, we’ve gotta try and figure

00:17:43.977 –> 00:17:44.877
out where these are coming from.

00:17:44.877 –> 00:17:45.327
Stop.

00:17:46.317 –> 00:17:47.127
Meredith Johnson: Everyone stopped.

00:17:47.127 –> 00:17:47.697
Of course.

00:17:48.267 –> 00:17:50.937
And at that point, it wasn’t clear
where the bones had come from.

00:17:50.937 –> 00:17:50.997
I.

00:17:52.032 –> 00:17:54.012
Emma Pomeroy: These were probably
a few remains that have been

00:17:54.012 –> 00:17:57.942
disturbed from the section wall,
so the wall of the excavation.

00:17:58.152 –> 00:18:02.742
So we then very carefully started sort
of cleaning back those excavation walls,

00:18:02.742 –> 00:18:06.882
trying to figure out where these bones
might have come from, and right towards

00:18:06.882 –> 00:18:11.412
the end of that field season, we were
able to identify the outline of a rib

00:18:11.412 –> 00:18:16.902
cage, possibly with a second bit at the
top in the section wall, and then on.

00:18:17.152 –> 00:18:20.422
Over on the right side as we were
facing, it was a concentration of

00:18:20.422 –> 00:18:25.102
hand bones with a few finger bones
that seemed to be in articulation.

00:18:25.102 –> 00:18:26.992
So still in their anatomical positions,

00:18:27.232 –> 00:18:31.072
Meredith Johnson: it looked like
they’d found another individual because

00:18:31.072 –> 00:18:32.512
it was the end of the field season.

00:18:32.542 –> 00:18:36.202
They didn’t have time to start removing
their remains right away, so they

00:18:36.202 –> 00:18:39.922
covered up the bones to protect them
until they returned the following year,

00:18:43.642 –> 00:18:46.227
Emma Pomeroy: and that’s where we
left it, which is a kind of a real

00:18:47.017 –> 00:18:50.082
cliffhanger, I guess, you know, knowing
those remains were there, but not

00:18:50.082 –> 00:18:52.602
being able to excavate them at the time

00:18:53.022 –> 00:18:56.472
Meredith Johnson: they wanted to be able
to excavate from above because that would

00:18:56.472 –> 00:19:01.272
allow them to preserve the context and
better understand how these bones came to

00:19:01.272 –> 00:19:05.262
be there and what had happened to them in
all the years they’d been in the ground.

00:19:06.357 –> 00:19:10.527
The next field season, they had to remove
a big boulder that was right in the way.

00:19:11.127 –> 00:19:15.657
So it wasn’t until 2018 that they
started to excavate the individual

00:19:15.657 –> 00:19:18.057
who’d become known as Shanidar Zed

00:19:18.627 –> 00:19:22.977
Emma Pomeroy: as I was excavating, the
first thing that really came into view

00:19:23.307 –> 00:19:26.337
was the right side, um, of the eye socket.

00:19:26.547 –> 00:19:29.637
And up until that point, you know,
we’d known we had some, some ribs,

00:19:29.817 –> 00:19:32.877
perhaps a bit of a spine, uh, a hand.

00:19:33.627 –> 00:19:38.997
Or some fingers, but we hadn’t known about
the skull and that the skull was there.

00:19:39.687 –> 00:19:40.887
So that was very exciting.

00:19:40.887 –> 00:19:44.967
So I remember uncovering that and
saying, wow, you know, not, there seems

00:19:44.967 –> 00:19:46.137
to be at least part of a skull here.

00:19:46.137 –> 00:19:50.517
But not only that, from the
shape of the bones, we can see

00:19:50.517 –> 00:19:52.377
that this isn’t modern human.

00:19:52.377 –> 00:19:55.437
You know, it’s not like us
Neanderthals have much heavier brow

00:19:55.437 –> 00:19:58.857
ridges above their eyes, and you
could see that that’s what we had.

00:19:59.517 –> 00:20:03.147
Meredith Johnson: They worked through
the 2018 and 2019 field seasons to

00:20:03.147 –> 00:20:08.487
fully recover Shanidar Zed they had
found the upper body of an individual

00:20:08.487 –> 00:20:10.347
cut right through at the waist.

00:20:11.397 –> 00:20:16.467
Zed was the first articulated Neanderthal
skeleton found in the 21st century.

00:20:17.547 –> 00:20:19.677
A massively important discovery anywhere.

00:20:20.247 –> 00:20:23.787
But maybe even more so because it
happened at such an iconic site.

00:20:24.387 –> 00:20:28.317
Emma Pomeroy: Any find of human remains
is important, but particularly to know

00:20:28.317 –> 00:20:33.537
that these are Neanderthal remains
from Shanidar Cave, very exciting

00:20:33.537 –> 00:20:35.517
and a big sense of responsibility.

00:20:35.847 –> 00:20:41.157
Um, they were also very difficult to
excavate, so the bones aren’t fossils.

00:20:41.547 –> 00:20:45.117
They, you know, the, the bone
has not been replaced by mineral.

00:20:45.537 –> 00:20:47.877
They’re still bone, but very soft.

00:20:48.897 –> 00:20:53.067
So sometimes even with a, a
light brush, the bone falls apart

00:20:53.817 –> 00:20:55.377
Meredith Johnson: to
stabilize the delicate bones.

00:20:55.377 –> 00:20:59.907
They used a consolidate, a kind of inert
glue that you can paint onto bones.

00:21:00.417 –> 00:21:04.137
It strengthens them from the inside
out and bonds the bones to the

00:21:04.137 –> 00:21:08.157
surrounding sediment to make a kind
of a block of bone sediment and glue.

00:21:08.877 –> 00:21:12.747
Later the glue can be dissolved, returning
everything to its original state.

00:21:14.022 –> 00:21:16.872
Emma Pomeroy: So then the question
is, well, how do we, what’s

00:21:16.872 –> 00:21:18.012
the best thing to do with that?

00:21:18.012 –> 00:21:20.232
Do we take out a whole block?

00:21:20.232 –> 00:21:22.872
Do we take out the whole skeleton at once?

00:21:23.502 –> 00:21:27.132
You can then excavate everything in a
much more controlled environment in a lab.

00:21:28.242 –> 00:21:32.352
But there’s also a risk, and we were
particularly aware of that risk because

00:21:32.352 –> 00:21:36.372
actually the reason Shanidar Zed is
cut through at the waist is because.

00:21:36.727 –> 00:21:39.967
The skeleton was right next
to where the famous flower

00:21:39.967 –> 00:21:41.527
burial was found, Shanidar Four

00:21:42.157 –> 00:21:46.807
Meredith Johnson: back in 1960, Solecki’s
team had unknowingly cut right through

00:21:46.807 –> 00:21:50.827
Z when they removed the big block
around Shanidar Four and when they

00:21:50.827 –> 00:21:52.477
worked on Shanidar four in the lab.

00:21:52.917 –> 00:21:57.267
They also found partial remains of
two more adults, Shanidar six and

00:21:57.367 –> 00:21:59.727
eight, and a baby Shanidar nine.

00:22:01.437 –> 00:22:04.467
But because they hadn’t known what
they’d find in there, they didn’t

00:22:04.467 –> 00:22:08.067
preserve the context that might help
them understand why all these Neanderthal

00:22:08.067 –> 00:22:13.257
remains were clustered so tightly to
together inside such a big roomy cave.

00:22:13.767 –> 00:22:16.647
Emma Pomeroy: What I ended up
doing was removing the remains

00:22:16.677 –> 00:22:21.387
in, um, smaller blocks so that we
could have much more control over.

00:22:22.002 –> 00:22:24.582
The other information and understanding
the relationships between them.

00:22:24.912 –> 00:22:27.222
Meredith Johnson: They took
micro CT scans of all the blocks.

00:22:27.642 –> 00:22:31.722
The scans were like a map to guide
their work as they carefully extracted

00:22:31.722 –> 00:22:33.912
hundreds of delicate bone fragments.

00:22:34.422 –> 00:22:39.612
The project’s lead conservator worked
for more than a year to painstakingly

00:22:39.612 –> 00:22:43.932
reconstruct Z’s crushed and flattened
skull, and the team got to work

00:22:43.932 –> 00:22:46.362
to figure out who ShanidarZ was.

00:22:46.902 –> 00:22:48.402
And how she came to be in the cave.

00:22:48.972 –> 00:22:52.812
Emma Pomeroy: I think we’re still at
the very beginning of what’s gonna

00:22:52.812 –> 00:22:54.792
be quite a long research journey.

00:22:55.152 –> 00:23:00.162
Um, but what we have been able
to learn so far is that she was

00:23:00.162 –> 00:23:02.442
an adult and an older adult.

00:23:02.442 –> 00:23:04.542
Her teeth are extremely worn down.

00:23:04.572 –> 00:23:07.422
Some of the front teeth don’t
have any crown left, and she just

00:23:07.422 –> 00:23:08.802
had the little bits of the roots.

00:23:09.162 –> 00:23:09.732
At the front,

00:23:09.912 –> 00:23:12.462
Meredith Johnson: the team used
a variety of new techniques, like

00:23:12.462 –> 00:23:16.392
analyzing proteins in her teeth to
determine that Zed was a female.

00:23:17.532 –> 00:23:19.632
Zed was small and lightly built.

00:23:20.022 –> 00:23:21.852
She would’ve stood around five feet tall.

00:23:23.412 –> 00:23:27.642
There were signs of degeneration
like arthritis in her spine, which

00:23:27.642 –> 00:23:31.302
like her worn teeth pointed to
Zed being an older individual.

00:23:31.932 –> 00:23:34.422
They estimated she was in
her forties when she died.

00:23:35.487 –> 00:23:39.567
And with modern dating tools, they
found that Zed lived and died around

00:23:39.567 –> 00:23:44.757
75,000 years ago, roughly the same
time as many of the other Shanidar

00:23:44.757 –> 00:23:48.957
individuals, including Shanidar
four, the famous flower burial.

00:23:49.467 –> 00:23:54.177
And now Zed is giving researchers a
second chance to solve the mystery

00:23:54.177 –> 00:23:57.837
of why these individuals were there
and whether they were intentionally

00:23:57.837 –> 00:23:59.847
buried with flowers or not.

00:24:00.312 –> 00:24:04.752
The sediments the team collected from
beneath Zed give a tantalizing clue.

00:24:05.802 –> 00:24:08.562
Emma Pomeroy: So what we could say
for Shanidar Zed is that actually

00:24:08.562 –> 00:24:12.582
there was a, probably a shallow water
channel where the body was originally.

00:24:12.582 –> 00:24:13.992
So there’s already a bit of a dip there.

00:24:14.652 –> 00:24:18.162
But that dip had been
intentionally made bigger.

00:24:18.777 –> 00:24:19.857
To accommodate the body.

00:24:20.667 –> 00:24:24.477
And you can see that because you know,
if you imagine digging a little hole as

00:24:24.477 –> 00:24:29.157
you scoop out the soil or the sediment
you push down on the sediment, that’s

00:24:29.157 –> 00:24:30.627
just below what you’re taking out.

00:24:30.717 –> 00:24:33.297
And we can see that sort of
compression of the sediments

00:24:33.627 –> 00:24:35.337
just under where the bones are.

00:24:35.457 –> 00:24:39.057
Meredith Johnson: This was clear
evidence that around 75,000 years

00:24:39.057 –> 00:24:44.307
ago, someone had on purpose dug
outta space to place Z’s body.

00:24:44.832 –> 00:24:50.802
Not only that, but around Zed are four
other Neanderthals buried in a cluster,

00:24:50.922 –> 00:24:52.542
but at different points in time.

00:24:53.262 –> 00:24:57.162
Emma Pomeroy: So we’ve got multiple
occasions where we can see remains

00:24:57.372 –> 00:24:58.872
coming to be in this one spot.

00:25:00.192 –> 00:25:05.202
And that’s really exciting because
puts aside these interpretations of

00:25:05.202 –> 00:25:08.742
people saying, oh, well it was just a,
a family group that died of exposure

00:25:08.742 –> 00:25:10.512
on a cold day all huddled together.

00:25:11.772 –> 00:25:14.262
No, we can say they’re
coming back to this one spot.

00:25:14.682 –> 00:25:17.772
Multiple times and they’re coming
back on separate occasions.

00:25:18.822 –> 00:25:21.702
It does start to suggest
that that’s not just chance.

00:25:22.272 –> 00:25:24.822
Graeme Barker: We think it’s of
the order of like a generation

00:25:25.662 –> 00:25:29.202
each time it looks like it.

00:25:29.202 –> 00:25:32.412
It’s not within days or weeks or
months or even a few years, that

00:25:32.412 –> 00:25:33.912
these bodies are being placed there.

00:25:34.812 –> 00:25:38.502
And it’s clear also from the micro
morphology, the sections that

00:25:38.502 –> 00:25:40.092
there was vegetation involved too.

00:25:40.092 –> 00:25:42.462
So probably they covered
the body in vegetation.

00:25:43.572 –> 00:25:45.912
Meredith Johnson: So if Zed and the
others were intentionally placed

00:25:45.912 –> 00:25:51.102
there at separate times like a family
cemetery plot and there’s evidence of

00:25:51.102 –> 00:25:55.662
vegetation, does this mean Solecki’s
flower burial hypothesis was right?

00:25:57.882 –> 00:25:59.712
It’s actually not so simple.

00:25:59.772 –> 00:26:04.392
The team with Chris Hunt as the lead
author published a study in 2023,

00:26:04.812 –> 00:26:08.272
reexamining the Pollen clumps that
were the evidence for the Shanidar

00:26:08.292 –> 00:26:10.182
four flower burial interpretation.

00:26:11.082 –> 00:26:14.712
What the new researchers found was
that many of the pollen clusters

00:26:14.712 –> 00:26:19.302
underneath Shanidar four were from
flowers that bloomed at different times.

00:26:19.872 –> 00:26:21.942
They couldn’t have been picked on one day.

00:26:22.542 –> 00:26:26.052
So rather than Neanderthals placing
these flowers below the body before

00:26:26.052 –> 00:26:31.272
burial, they say ground nesting
bees were most likely responsible

00:26:31.302 –> 00:26:32.892
for the ancient clumps of pollen.

00:26:34.017 –> 00:26:36.087
Graeme Barker: Although we’ve
shown, yes, the flowers might

00:26:36.087 –> 00:26:37.437
have been taken in by bees.

00:26:37.437 –> 00:26:41.997
There’s just so much more
that is just so extraordinary.

00:26:42.417 –> 00:26:45.867
Emma Pomeroy: I think perhaps our focus
on burial has been a bit misguided

00:26:46.347 –> 00:26:49.377
because if you look across human
populations today, we don’t all.

00:26:49.992 –> 00:26:50.502
Burial dead.

00:26:50.502 –> 00:26:54.672
We have different traditions, different
cultural traditions that can be cremation.

00:26:54.732 –> 00:26:55.152
Burial.

00:26:55.152 –> 00:26:57.402
They’re probably the ones we are
most familiar with in the west.

00:26:57.402 –> 00:27:01.392
But, you know, placing the body in water,
um, sky burials where the body’s left,

00:27:01.392 –> 00:27:03.642
exposed, all sorts of things, right?

00:27:03.642 –> 00:27:06.372
And so burial per se is not special.

00:27:07.122 –> 00:27:10.302
But what’s quite unusual about what
humans do is that however we treat

00:27:10.302 –> 00:27:12.282
the dead, it has some meaning.

00:27:12.462 –> 00:27:15.852
So really that question needed to
be broadened out to say, okay, are

00:27:15.852 –> 00:27:19.392
Neanderthals doing something that
potentially has meaning with the body?

00:27:20.532 –> 00:27:22.932
What we wanted to do was
just gather the evidence.

00:27:23.292 –> 00:27:26.832
Meredith Johnson: The team is still
working at Shanidar and there’s still much

00:27:26.832 –> 00:27:29.052
to learn about the Shanidar Neanderthals.

00:27:29.412 –> 00:27:33.072
The increasing evidence they’re
finding is that these Neanderthals,

00:27:33.072 –> 00:27:34.812
were doing something intentional.

00:27:34.812 –> 00:27:37.572
Emma Pomeroy: We have to be a bit
careful about overinterpretation, but

00:27:38.322 –> 00:27:44.382
the more we find this kind of repetition,
you know, what’s the chance that in

00:27:44.382 –> 00:27:47.412
a relatively short period of time,
you’re gonna get five Neanderthals,

00:27:47.742 –> 00:27:52.092
perhaps on at least three separate
occasions within this one tiny space.

00:27:52.782 –> 00:27:56.532
When you’ve got this huge cave, it, it
starts to suggest there’s something else

00:27:56.532 –> 00:28:01.752
going on than just people happening to
die in the cave because they, they’ve

00:28:01.752 –> 00:28:05.322
curl up there ’cause they’re feeling
sick or ’cause it’s cold or whatever.

00:28:06.522 –> 00:28:10.242
Meredith Johnson: At least three of the
bodies are oriented in the same direction.

00:28:10.752 –> 00:28:13.152
Their heads are towards the
cave entrance to the east.

00:28:13.422 –> 00:28:14.922
Their feet are towards the west.

00:28:15.987 –> 00:28:20.817
And if you remember all the large boulders
at Shanidar Z and the others are clustered

00:28:20.817 –> 00:28:25.197
behind a tall rock pillar that would’ve
stood a couple meters above the surface,

00:28:25.497 –> 00:28:27.357
like a marker for the burial spot.

00:28:29.217 –> 00:28:32.607
This all gives the team even more to
consider as they work to interpret

00:28:32.607 –> 00:28:36.117
the evidence for how the Shanidar
Neanderthals treated their dead.

00:28:37.062 –> 00:28:39.492
Graeme Barker: I think why the,
why Shanidar is just so important

00:28:39.492 –> 00:28:40.842
in these burials, if you like.

00:28:40.842 –> 00:28:44.292
We’re under a public scrutiny,
a professional scientific

00:28:44.292 –> 00:28:46.572
scrutiny, and it’s our job.

00:28:46.572 –> 00:28:49.992
Just try to be as open
and as clear about this.

00:28:49.992 –> 00:28:55.722
We can see this, we can show, so
we have got micro chronological

00:28:55.722 –> 00:28:57.912
evidence about plants there.

00:28:58.422 –> 00:29:03.762
Emma has got hard scientific evidence
of what bones, where they are, what

00:29:03.762 –> 00:29:05.412
state they’re in, how they’re placed.

00:29:05.922 –> 00:29:11.292
We’ve just had some new information
from some special imaging where it

00:29:11.322 –> 00:29:14.262
looks like the body juices, if you like.

00:29:14.727 –> 00:29:16.857
A gathering in particular place.

00:29:16.857 –> 00:29:21.597
In other words, it, it’s another piece
of solid evidence showing that they were

00:29:21.597 –> 00:29:24.177
placed there as bodies, not as skeletons.

00:29:24.627 –> 00:29:27.627
And what that adds up to is,
is more and more extraordinary.

00:29:27.747 –> 00:29:29.607
It clearly was a special place.

00:29:30.057 –> 00:29:35.472
It’s clear that Neanderthals are passing
on information down through generations.

00:29:36.237 –> 00:29:38.152
This is where you go, this is what you do.

00:29:39.512 –> 00:29:41.787
Meredith Johnson: Graeme and his
colleagues say that like with the

00:29:41.787 –> 00:29:45.777
Kurdish herders who used the cave
in modern times, Neanderthals were

00:29:45.777 –> 00:29:50.307
probably returning to live at Shanidar
for a few weeks or months every year.

00:29:51.027 –> 00:29:54.267
Graeme Barker: The campfires of these
Neanderthals, they’re immediately there.

00:29:54.267 –> 00:29:57.927
I mean, they’re, they’re half
a meter to two meters away

00:29:57.927 –> 00:29:59.127
from where these bodies are.

00:29:59.637 –> 00:30:03.957
And the rubbish, the, the bits of
stone, stone tools and the bits of

00:30:03.957 –> 00:30:08.127
animal bone, they’re scattered in around
the, so the bodies are being, there

00:30:08.127 –> 00:30:12.117
isn’t a separation of life and death,
but there, there’s care and there’s

00:30:12.117 –> 00:30:15.147
attention, and there’s repeated memory.

00:30:15.807 –> 00:30:19.347
Handed down about this is what you
do and this is where you do it.

00:30:19.407 –> 00:30:22.317
Now we can’t get to the storytelling
bit where they’re all sitting

00:30:22.317 –> 00:30:25.167
around, you know, socializing.

00:30:25.677 –> 00:30:26.907
But we’re on the edge of that.

00:30:26.967 –> 00:30:30.447
If we’ve got people coming
back to the same site, they

00:30:30.447 –> 00:30:32.067
must have been storytelling.

00:30:32.067 –> 00:30:34.707
They must have been passing
information on from generation

00:30:34.707 –> 00:30:37.302
to generation and sitting around.

00:30:38.007 –> 00:30:43.467
These campfires and we don’t understand,
but it just shows a lot of complicated

00:30:43.467 –> 00:30:45.297
things going on at that time.

00:30:45.297 –> 00:30:49.407
In the heads of those Neanderthals,
there’s nothing like it anywhere else.

00:30:54.427 –> 00:31:01.557
Meredith Johnson: Shanidar preserves
a deep and wonderful record of

00:31:01.557 –> 00:31:03.867
Neanderthal and human cultural heritage.

00:31:04.267 –> 00:31:08.457
Graeme Barker and Emma Pomeroy and their
team hope that their ongoing work there

00:31:08.457 –> 00:31:13.047
will help make a case for Shanidar to
be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

00:31:13.917 –> 00:31:17.547
a designation that would help preserve
Shanidar for future generations.

00:31:18.177 –> 00:31:20.097
Emma Pomeroy: It’s not just
about the archeology as well.

00:31:20.097 –> 00:31:22.767
I mean, Shanidar Cave has been used.

00:31:23.577 –> 00:31:26.517
Right up until very recently, and,
and it’s still used in different ways.

00:31:26.517 –> 00:31:29.937
So there’s us there escalating it,
there’s people coming to visit as

00:31:29.937 –> 00:31:34.287
tourists, you know, to, to understand a
little bit more about Kurdish heritage.

00:31:34.347 –> 00:31:38.727
And we hear stories from people who
come and visit or who live locally

00:31:38.727 –> 00:31:40.227
about, you know, how they were.

00:31:40.247 –> 00:31:43.997
Part of those herding groups, and we’ve
spoken to someone who lived in the cave

00:31:43.997 –> 00:31:46.817
when he was a young boy, and people
have said, oh, I was born in the cave.

00:31:47.177 –> 00:31:51.167
And we know people sheltered above
the cave when, uh, Saddam Hussein

00:31:51.167 –> 00:31:52.817
was trying to exterminate the Kurds.

00:31:53.117 –> 00:31:57.557
There’s this amazing history that
stretches at least back 75,000 years right

00:31:57.557 –> 00:32:01.007
through to, to today, and all of that.

00:32:01.007 –> 00:32:05.477
All of that package is so
culturally important and

00:32:05.477 –> 00:32:09.227
deserves to be widely recognized.

00:32:23.592 –> 00:32:25.272
Meredith Johnson: Thank you
to Graeme Barker and Emma

00:32:25.272 –> 00:32:26.383
Pomeroy for sharing their work.

00:32:27.427 –> 00:32:31.872
Check your show notes to learn more about
Shanidar and the new Leakey foundation

00:32:31.872 –> 00:32:37.272
supported excavations by Graeme and his
team Origin Stories is a project of the

00:32:37.272 –> 00:32:41.682
Leakey Foundation, a donor supported
nonprofit dedicated to funding human

00:32:41.682 –> 00:32:44.112
origins research and sharing discoveries.

00:32:45.522 –> 00:32:49.062
This episode is generously
sponsored by Dub and Ginny Crook.

00:32:49.602 –> 00:32:53.952
They are longtime Leakey Foundation
Fellows and Origin Stories sponsors.

00:32:54.687 –> 00:32:57.777
They’re passionate about human
origin’s research and making

00:32:57.777 –> 00:32:59.517
science accessible for all.

00:33:00.117 –> 00:33:02.697
We’re so grateful for their
involvement and support.

00:33:04.137 –> 00:33:07.987
Additional support comes from our
listeners as well as Jeanne Newman, the

00:33:08.057 –> 00:33:11.847
Anne and Gordon Getty Foundation, and the
Joan and Arnold Travis Education Fund.

00:33:12.387 –> 00:33:16.857
If you can please support the show
with a one-time or monthly donation,

00:33:17.787 –> 00:33:21.597
your gift will be matched and every
dollar helps make this show possible.

00:33:22.587 –> 00:33:24.757
Click the link in your
show notes or visit Leakey

00:33:24.777 –> 00:33:27.567
foundation.org/originstories to donate.

00:33:28.407 –> 00:33:31.587
This episode was produced and
written by Ray Pang and me Meredith

00:33:31.587 –> 00:33:33.927
Johnson Sound Designed by Ray Pang.

00:33:33.957 –> 00:33:35.727
Our editor is Audrey Quinn.

00:33:36.177 –> 00:33:39.057
Michael Gallagher helped record
the interviews at Cambridge.

00:33:39.567 –> 00:33:43.167
Our theme music is by Henry Nagel
with additional music by Blue

00:33:43.167 –> 00:33:45.067
dot Sessions and Lee Roservere.

00:33:45.507 –> 00:33:46.407
Thanks for listening.