The skull was found in a cave that led 50 years closed to scientists for political reasons, so he was named Shanidar Z in honor of her.
United Kingdom: how was the discovery
neanderthal.jpg
The face of a Neanderthal woman who lived 75,000 years ago.
Courtesy C5N.
The work of the scientists was portrayed in the BBC documentary “Secrets of the Neanderthals”, on the Netflix platform, and seeks to analyze what the distant relatives of modern man were likebefore its extinction.
The lower part of the woman’s skeleton was excavated in 1960 next to the remains of at least 10 Neanderthals. The person who carried out this task was the American archaeologist Ralph Soleckiknown for his work rehabilitating the image of this species.
The discovery of the skull of Shanidar Z, surely crushed by a falling stone shortly after his death. With the reconstruction of it, they concluded that it was a woman about 40 years old at the time of his death.
According to the teacher Graeme Barkerfrom the McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research in Cambridge, the team “did not expect to find more Neanderthals” in the cave and only wanted to date the burials in order to be able to use the site to contribute to the debate about the reasons for the disappearance of the Neanderthals.
Shanidar Z was part of a group of five specimens found just behind a huge vertical rock in the center of the cave, which could have served as an indicator for the Neanderthals to bury their dead in the same place.
The placement of the remains of the bodies found, in the same position and facing the same direction, could mean that they had a “tradition” around death and that there was “a transmission of knowledge between generations,” he explains Chris Hunta professor at Liverpool John Moores University, who participated in the research.
How was the extraction of the Neanderthal skull and its reconstruction?
Emma Pomeroya paleoanthropologist at the University of Cambridge, explained that The extraction of Shanidar Z’s remains was a very delicate operation. First, the bones and surrounding sediments had to be reinforced in situ with a glue-like consolidant before they could be extracted into numerous small pieces wrapped in aluminum foil.
Then, the More than 200 skull fragments were assembled in a Cambridge laboratory and, once reconstructed, was 3D printed. With this, paleoartists Adrie and Alfons Kennis managed to reconstruct his face applying layers of recomposed skin and muscles.
Although the skulls of Neanderthals were very different from those of humans“with enormous brow ridges and practically no chin,” the recreated face “suggests that These differences were not as pronounced.“says Pomeroy.
This, according to the paleoanthropologist, allows us to see “how the crossings between species occurred, given that almost everyone alive today still has Neanderthal DNA“.
