Neanderthals really did bury their dead

Abstract

Archaeologists in Iraq have discovered a new Neanderthal skeleton that appears to have been deliberately buried between about 60,000 and 70,000 years ago. The find reinforces earlier claims that this extinct type of human used graves for their dead. Excavations of Shanidar cave in northern Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s yielded the remains of 10 Neanderthals, including one dubbed Shanidar 4, which was found with clumps of pollen--suggesting the body had been deliberately placed in a grave and flowers scattered on it. Here, Marshall discusses an analysis by Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge and her team of a new set of remains from the cave: the upper half of a Neanderthal. They found multiple lines of evidence that this Neanderthal was deliberately buried, including that fact that the sediment layer around the body is visibly different to the layer below. What is more, the sediment below the body shows signs of having been disturbed by digging.