CHAPTER 4 - Age and Sex of the Shanidar Neandertals

Abstract

The Shanidar Neandertal sample consists of two infants, Shanidar 7 and 9, three young adults, Shanidar 2, 6, and 8, and four older adults, Shanidar 1, 3, 4, and 5. It is difficult to tell exactly how old each of the adults was at death, but it is possible to rank the Shanidar partial skeletons in terms of age. The best arrangement would be in ascending order: 7 and 9; 2; 6 and 8; 1 & and 4; 3 and 5. The age of Shanidar 8 is highly uncertain so its position in the ranking could be considerably different. Among the Shanidar adults, three of the individuals—Shanidar 1, 3, and 4—appear, on the basis of pelvic evidence, to be male. Two other individuals—Shanidar 2 and 5 are probably male, largely on the basis of the large size of their skulls. Only two of the adults—Shanidar 6 and 8—appear to be female. It may be assumed that there is not necessarily a systematic bias in the sexing of the Shanidar Neandertals. The Shanidar fossil sample preserves males and females, infants, young adults, and old adults. However, it is clearly dominated, in numbers and degree of preservation, by elderly males. Even though there are other sites that have yielded the remains of adult Neandertals of similarly advanced ages at death, Shanidar is the only site that has provided the remains of several elderly male Neandertals. This should be kept in mind with respect to the evaluation of their morphologies as males tend to be larger and more robust than females among the Neandertals and many of the abnormalities present on the Shanidar specimens are undoubtedly correlated with the advanced ages of these individuals.