Evidence for funerary behaviour and lethal trauma in a new Neanderthal individual from Shanidar Cave

Shanidar Cave has long featured in debates concerning Neanderthal cognitive capacity and behaviour, including evidence for care and intentional burial. By identifying additional individuals, including Shanidar A reported here, new excavations have expanded a burial cluster first identified in 1960. Shanidar A, an older adult, was deposited around 75,000 years ago, decayed, and their skeletal remains were subsequently disturbed by a flash flood. Our findings raise the minimum number of individuals in this unparalleled cluster to five, supporting interpretations of complex, potentially meaningful Neanderthal mortuary behaviour. Shanidar A also demonstrates major non-fatal trauma to the face and rare evidence of perimortem penetrating trauma among Neanderthals. Trauma among Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Neanderthals and modern humans, and subsequent survival, is common. However, the facial injury was severe and unusual. It suggests care from group members, the evolutionary origins of which are also contentious. The nature of the perimortem penetrating traumatic injury adds to a small corpus of such injuries in the hominin fossil record. The morphology of this scapula perforation is consistent with injury from a wooden spear, providing valuable (albeit indirect) evidence for the use of wooden implements in the Middle Palaeolithic, which is often difficult to demonstrate given the rare preservation of organic materials.

The evolutionary origins of intentional treatment of the dead, and its implications regarding capacities for abstract thought and caring behaviour in the hominin lineage, continue to be a matter of contention1,2,3,4. Evidence for such behaviour amongst Neanderthals has received particular attention as part of wider discussions regarding their behaviour and cognitive capacity1,5,6,7. Although mortuary treatment of the dead among Neanderthals has become widely (though not universally) accepted on a general level, whether individual cases represent intentional mortuary treatment is still debated8,9,10,11,12, and whether emotional attachment, practicality and/or symbolic meaning underpinned this behaviour is challenging to discern (e.g.,6,13).

The tight cluster of individuals associated with the Neanderthal skeletal remains designated Shanidar 4 (the famous ‘flower burial’) from Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan (Fig. 1), may provide some of the clearest evidence of symbolic mortuary (i.e., funerary) behaviour among Neanderthals. The cluster comprises the skeletal remains of at least four Neanderthal individuals discovered by Ralph Solecki’s team in 1960 and designated by him Shanidar 4, 6 and 8 (adults) and Shanidar 9 (an infant). During new excavations that began in 2015, the skeletal remains of at least three adult individuals have been recovered directly adjacent to the 1960 individuals and designated Shanidar Z, A and B14,15. The remains of Shanidar Z and B, and possibly A, would have been truncated by the removal of the 1960 remains in a single sediment block16.

All the individuals from the Shanidar 4/Z cluster date to ~ 70–75 ka (thousand years ago, see14), and lay within an area approximately 1.5 m long, 1 m wide and 1 m deep. Relative to the cave mouth, the remains are located directly behind a large vertical boulder that had fallen from a geological fault in the cave roof, and which would have been a prominent marker above the contemporary cave floor16 (Fig. 2). The field evidence, including sediment micromorphological analysis, indicates the excavation of a shallow depression for the placement of Shanidar Z14, and multiple deposition events of Neanderthal remains16. Although the heavily criticised13,17‘flower burial’ theory proposed by Solecki7,18 and Leroi-Gourhan19 has not stood up to further scrutiny20, the repeated use of a single circumscribed space to deposit the dead within a relatively short time-span (likely within generations, given that sequential deposits were in most cases made before full decomposition of the previously deposited body) is difficult to explain except in terms of intentional patterned behaviour. The highly restricted area within which the cluster was deposited points to specific meaning being attached to this location, rather than pure practicality or sentiment.

The argument that these individuals represent a single event where a group huddled behind the vertical rock for protection from the cold can be excluded. First, it is clear that the deposition of individuals occurred in multiple separate events, since there is a sedimentary separation of different individuals16, and some were disturbed by the deposition of the chronologically younger individual(s)8,18. Secondly, the sedimentary contexts indicate deposition in periods of mild climate, based on palynology and sedimentology, making death from exposure unlikely14. Therefore, the most parsimonious explanation for the number of individuals deposited in this compact space on several separate occasions is intentional activity.

The Shanidar A skeletal remains lay in a waterlain sedimentary context, gently sloping from east to west (Figs. 2b and 3c) approximately 150 mm below the thorax of Shanidar Z (Fig. 2)14 and were excavated in 2019 and 202215,16. Therefore, unlike the other individuals from this cluster, whose remains (as far as can be discerned) formed a group that overlapped or lay vertically adjacent to one another, the Shanidar A remains were clearly separated in vertical space from the rest of the cluster. However, the close proximity and positioning of the remains with a broadly similar orientation to (head to the east, reclining on back) and directly below Shanidar Z suggest that Shanidar A could be part of this same group.

An inventory of skeletal and dental elements attributed to Shanidar A is given in Table S1. The remains comprise a largely complete right hand, two left ribs, a right rib fragment, a left scapula and seven teeth. We attribute all the skeletal remains and six of the teeth to a single individual, Shanidar A, on the basis that: (1) there are no duplicated anatomical elements; (2) the positions of the bones were broadly consistent with belonging to a single individual reclining on their back with the right upper limb crossed over the body (Fig. 3); (3) all elements derive from a skeletally mature (adult) individual; and (4) no teeth are duplicated in the assemblage and all anterior teeth are heavily worn, sharing an uncommon pattern of dental wear and pathological lesions. However, we acknowledge the possibility that the skeletal remains could pertain to multiple individuals. The seventh tooth, a molar, presents far less wear than the other teeth and lay below the scapula, and so likely came from a separate individual from Shanidar A.