About 75,000 years ago, a middle-aged Neanderthal woman was buried in a cave in the foothills of Iraq.
Now, thanks to a dedicated team of archaeologists, his face can be revealed for the first time.
Named Shanidar Z, his skeleton had been buried by tens of thousands of years of sediment before being first discovered in 2018.
When Cambridge and Liverpool University experts John Moores first discovered his skull, it was flattened to about 2cm thick.
It had been crushed, possibly by a rockfall, relatively soon after his death, meaning that more than 200 pieces were assembled by freehand to return it to its original shape.
About 75,000 years ago, a middle-aged Neanderthal woman was buried in a cave in the foothills of Iraq. Now, thanks to a dedicated team of archaeologists, her face can be revealed for the first time.
When Cambridge and Liverpool University experts John Moores first discovered his skull, it was flattened to about 2cm thick.
Now, his face has been recreated as part of a new Netflix documentary called Secrets of the Neanderthals.
Dr Emma Pomeroy, palaeoanthropologist at Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, said: “The skulls of Neanderthals and humans look very different.
“Neanderthal skulls have enormous brow ridges and lack chins, with a projecting midface that results in more prominent noses. But the recreated face suggests that those differences were not so marked in life.
“Perhaps it is easier to see how interbreeding occurred between our species, to the point that almost everyone alive today still has Neanderthal DNA.”
With no pelvic bones, the team relied on sequencing proteins from tooth enamel to determine the sex of the skeleton, which is believed to be female and around forty years old.
At the time, this would have been an important age to reach.
The teeth were also used to measure their age through levels of wear, with some front teeth worn down to the roots.
At around five feet tall and with some of the smallest adult arm bones in the Neanderthal fossil record, her physique also implies that of a woman.
His skull had been crushed, possibly by a rockfall, relatively soon after his death, meaning that more than 200 pieces were assembled by freehand to return it to its original shape.
The reconstructed skull was surface scanned and 3D printed, forming the base of a reconstructed head created by world-leading paleo artists and identical twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis, who built layers of fabricated muscle and skin to reveal a face.
To extract the skeleton, the team first used a glue-like consolidant to strengthen the bones and surrounding sediment.
Then, they removed Shanidar Z in dozens of small blocks wrapped in aluminum foil from under twenty-five feet of dirt and rock in the heart of the cave, 500 miles north of Baghdad.
In the Cambridge lab, the researchers took micro-CT scans of each block before gradually diluting the glue and using the scans to guide the removal of bone fragments.
Dr Pomeroy said: “Each skull fragment is gently cleaned while glue and consolidant are added back to stabilize the bone, which can be very soft, similar in consistency to a biscuit dipped in tea.”
‘It’s like a high-stakes 3D puzzle. A single block can take fifteen days to process.
The reconstructed skull was surface scanned and 3D printed, forming the base of a reconstructed head created by world-leading paleo artists and identical twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis, who built layers of fabricated muscle and skin to reveal a face.
View of the entrance to the Shanidar Cave, within the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq
Further investigation since Shanidar Z was found has detected microscopic traces of charred food in the nearby soil.
These charred bits of seeds, nuts, and wild grasses suggest not only that Neanderthals prepared food (soaking and mashing legumes) and then cooked it, but that they also did so in the presence of their dead.
“Shanidar Z’s body was within arm’s reach of living people who were cooking with fire and eating,” Dr Pomeroy said.
«For these Neanderthals there does not seem to be such a clear separation between life and death.
‘We can see that the Neanderthals are returning to a particular place to bury their dead. This could be decades or even thousands of years apart.
‘Is it just a coincidence or is it intentional and if so, what brings you back?
“As an older woman, Shanidar Z would have been a repository of knowledge for her group, and here we are, 75,000 years later, still learning from her.”
Neanderthals are believed to have become extinct about 40,000 years ago and discoveries of new remains are rare.
The Neanderthal that appears in the documentary is the first to leave the cave in more than fifty years and perhaps the best preserved individual found in this century.
A close relative of modern humans, Neanderthals became extinct 40,000 years ago
Neanderthals were a close human ancestor who mysteriously became extinct about 40,000 years ago.
The species lived in Africa with early humans for millennia before moving to Europe about 300,000 years ago.
They were later joined by humans, who entered Eurasia about 48,000 years ago.
Neanderthals were a cousin species of humans, but not a direct ancestor (the two species diverged from a common ancestor) who perished about 50,000 years ago. The photo shows an exhibit from the Neanderthal museum.
These were the original “cavemen”, historically considered foolish and brutal compared to modern humans.
However, in recent years, and especially over the last decade, it has become increasingly evident that we have been underestimating Neanderthals.
A growing body of evidence points to a more sophisticated and multi-talented type of “caveman” than anyone thought possible.
It now seems likely that Neanderthals would have counted, buried their dead, painted, and even interbred with humans.
They used body art, such as pigments and beads, and were the first artists, with Neanderthal cave art (and symbolism) in Spain apparently predating the first modern human art by about 20,000 years.
It is believed that they hunted on land and did some fishing. However, they became extinct about 40,000 years ago after the success of Homo sapiens in Europe.