Neanderthal mortuary behaviour at Shanidar Cave
- Date
- c. 75,000 – 60,000 years ago
- Category
- Religion & ideology
- Region
- West Asia (Iraqi Kurdistan)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
At Shanidar Cave in the Zagros mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, excavations led by Ralph Solecki between 1951 and 1960 uncovered the remains of ten Neanderthal men, women and children.
Several appear to have been deliberately placed in the cave, and one individual, Shanidar 1, survived severe injuries — including a withered arm and head trauma — long enough that others may have cared for him. The most famous find, Shanidar 4, was associated with dense clumps of flower pollen, prompting the celebrated 'flower burial' hypothesis that Neanderthals laid their dead on beds of wildflowers. The pollen interpretation has since been questioned, with critics suggesting rodents or other natural agents introduced the pollen, but renewed excavations between 2014 and 2022 recovered further articulated skeletons in the same cluster, strengthening the case that this was a place to which Neanderthals repeatedly returned to deposit their dead. Whatever the precise rituals involved, Shanidar provides some of the strongest evidence that Neanderthals treated death with intention and that they tended sick and injured members of their groups.
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Related religion & ideology events
- Construction of the White Temple and Anu Ziggurat at Urukc. 3500 BCE
- Mungo Lady: the earliest known human cremationc. 42,000 years ago
- Plastered ancestral skulls of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Bc. 10,500 – 9,000 years ago (c. 8800–7000 BCE)
- The Löwenmensch (Lion-Man): earliest figurative sculpturec. 41,000–35,000 years ago
- Composition of the Rigvedac. 1500-1200 BCE
- Akhenaten's Atenist revolution and the Amarna periodc. 1348 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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