The uncovering made in the Shanidar Cave are some of the most thought - provoking and divisiveNeanderthalremains ever recover . Among the fistful of skeletons encounter scattered within the cave , one appears to have been laid to reside alongside significant amounts of pollen .
Some have rede this as evidence of a grand interment ritual as if a funeral was held for the Neanderthal and blossom were placed upon their grave accent . If that claim is correct , it would be yet another instance of how Neanderthals possess a level of emotional intelligence service on equivalence withHomo sapiensand paint a picture the species were not the heavily - browed dopes they are still sometimes portrayed as .
However , this title is not without its argument .
Excavation of the Shanidar Cave in the 1950s. Image credit: Fred Lewsey/Cambridge University
Found within the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq , the Shanidar Cave was excavated in the 1950s and 1960 by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University .
At least nine Neanderthal systema skeletale were establish buried here at the time , while a later archeological site revealedanother body . The phone number of remains base here betoken they were buried in an organized fashion , like aNeanderthal graveyard .
Shanidar IV , the " flower burial " body , remains the most disputed of all the eubstance found here . As account by Solecki in the journalSciencein 1975 , the deposit around the body was stud with significant amount of pollen from flowers such as Yarrow , cornflower , unmarried man ’s clitoris , St Barnaby ’s thistle , ragwort , grape vine hyacinth , horsetail , and hollyhock . Many of these plants have medicinal properties or are recognise to repel insects .
It ’s potential that thisNeanderthalwas an grownup male person aged 30 to 45 eld onetime who was buried on his odd side in a partial fetal placement . None of the other skeleton were found with pollen , which led Solecki to hypothesize that this individual was a very peculiar humans , perhaps even a shaman .
In this wrinkle of thought , they were buried with prime that held a deep cultural or even practical meaning for the residential area .
“ Death knows no season , and perhaps the other individuals find at Shanidar died during nonflowering season . Then again , it could be that even if the other person had expire during a unfolding season , for one rationality or another they were not accorded the same handling as Shanidar IV . One may reflect that Shanidar IV was not only a very important gentleman , a drawing card , but also may have been a form of medicine man or shaman in his mathematical group , ” he writes .
However , this interpretation is not widely agree with and the current consensus is that the presence of pollen is a cherry-red herring . Most now believe that the pollen cease up in the cave by small animals dragging flowers into their tunnel .
“ Deliberate placement of flowers has now been convincingly egest , ” Paul B Pettitt , an archaeologist at the University of Bristol , write in 2002 . " A recent testing of the microfauna from the strata into which the tomb was cut suggest that the pollen was deposited by the burrow rodentMeriones persicus , which is vulgar in the Shanidar microfauna and whose burrowing activity can be honor today . ”
Some experts even contend that Solecki and his squad accidentally contaminate the site with pollen themselves while tread down around the cave during their work .
Nevertheless , these debate should not undermine just how smart Neanderthals were . A wealth of grounds now exhibit that Neanderthals had complex communities and were incredibly smart .
While it ’s still not fully realize why theyfell into extinctionaround 40,000 years ago , it ’s cleared that it was n’t for alack of brain power . Just likeHomo sapiens , theycared for the disabledin their societal group andcreated brainy artworks , admit some of the oldest known cave art .
The discoveries at the Shanidar Cave might not bear witness it , but it ’s not out of the realms of opening that Neanderthals buried their all in alongside objects of deep signification and beauty .
