It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
A field study to survey the custom of tying rags on sacred trees in the northern part of Israel was carried out during 2000–2001. It included 60 interviewees: 24 Druze, 18 Moslem Arabs, 12 Moslem Bedouins and 6 Christian Arab individuals. Tree veneration was found to be quite uncommon among the Bedouins and rare among the Christian Arabs.
The results of the present study suggest there are 17 reasons for tying rags on sacred trees. Five reasons, as far as the author is aware, were not previously reported from the literature (i.e., breaking an oath, marking a blessed tree, marking the road to a blessed tree, asking for permission to pick fruit, and setting out rags for needy people). These usages appear to be endemic to Israel and to the Druze.
Two customs previously reported from Israel but not corroborated by the present survey are to pacify a tree’s spirit and as a charm for new clothes. Three of the 17 known reasons for tying rags on sacred trees are also known from regions beyond the Middle East (i.e., to transfer illness to the tree, to use a rag as a visiting card, and to pacify the tree’s spirits). And lastly, several customs never reported before from Israel appear to stem from the belief in ancient pagan polytheistic religions (to ensure a good yield, offerings to a tree’s deities/spirits, to pacify the ancestor’s spirits, to commemorate a death, and to pacify a tree’s spirit while picking fruits).
Twelve of the reported 17 reasons for hanging rags on sacred trees are known from Israel. These findings elucidate the widespread and variable tree worship traditions that are prevalent today in the region. In spite of a monotheistic ban against ancient pagan beliefs, trees still remain a subject of worship in Israel today, as manifested by the daily tying of rags upon branches.
Contents 1.Abstract.............4 2. The Sabean-Mandaean Community and ‘Reconciliation’.........5 3. Challenges Faced by the Sabean-Mandaean Community .......6 4. In Baghdad and the South of Iraq.....6 5. In the Kurdistan Region and Kirkuk.................10 6. Preventing Extinction ....................................11 7. The Way Forward ....................13 8. Recommendations..........14 References ...............15
The Story of Creation in the Mandaean
Holv Book the Ginza Rba Sabah Aldihisi PhD THESIS https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1444088/1/U591390.pdf Abstract: Sources of the research: The Mandaean holy books and scriptures in addition to old
Moslem writers and contemporary western scholars’ works.
The purpose of the research:
The research aims to translate the Mandaean Story of Creation, directly from
the Mandaean manuscript. Four other Ginza manuscripts from the Oriental and
India office at the British Library in London were used to compile a critical apparatus
of variants. Book three, or the Book of Creation, is the largest tractate of the
Mandaeans’ holy book the “Ginza Rba”. The Ginza names this tractate as raza usidra
qadmaia d-Suta haita qadmaita “The Mystery and the First Book of the First Living
Doctrine”. This tractate includes the cosmogony; the origin of the World of Light and
the World of Darkness, the rise of the First Great Life, the Second Life (Yosamin), the
Third Life (Abatur) and the Fourth Life (Ptahil); the Demiurge who created the
cosmos and Tibil (the earthly world). It also narrates the creation of the Mandaean
redeemer Manda d-Hiia (“Gnosis of Life”) and his descent to the Underworld and his
triumph against the forces of darkness. It narrates the creation of Adam and Eve and
the descent of the niSimta (soul) into the ‘tfdna (the human body). Tractate three also
includes an elaborate description of the demonic Ruha and her planetary sons and her
attempts to seduce Adam in order to entrap him in the world. The research consists of three parts: (1) The introduction: The Mandaeans and the Question of Their Origin, The
Mandaean system, The Main Characteristic Rituals of the Mandaeans, The
Mandaean manuscripts. (2) Analysis of the narrative: The First Account of the Story of Creation, The Second
Account of the Story of Creation, The Third account of the Story of Creation. (3) The Transcription and Translation of the Manuscript.
FEATURE Neanderthals Were People, Too New research shows they shared many behaviors that we long believed to be uniquely human. Why did science get them so wrong?
By Jon Mooallem NYT MAGAZINE JAN 2017
Neanderthal sculptures, named Nana and Flint, at the Gibraltar Museum.Credit...Jaap Scheeren for The New York Times
Joachim Neander was a 17th-century Calvinist theologian who often hiked through a valley outside Düsseldorf, Germany, writing hymns. Neander understood everything around him as a manifestation of the Lord’s will and work. There was no room in his worldview for randomness, only purpose and praise. “See how God this rolling globe/swathes with beauty as a robe,” one of his verses goes. “Forests, fields, and living things/each its Master’s glory sings.” He wrote dozens of hymns like this — awe-struck and simple-minded. Then he caught tuberculosis and died at 30.
Almost two centuries later, in the summer of 1856, workers quarrying limestone in that valley dug up an unusual skull. It was elongated and almost chinless, and the fossilized bones found alongside it were extra thick and fit together oddly. This was three years before Darwin published “The Origin of Species.” The science of human origins was not a science; the assumption was that our ancestors had always looked like us, all the way back to Adam. (Even distinguishing fossils from ordinary rock was beyond the grasp of many scientists. One popular method involved licking them; if the material had animal matter in it, it stuck to your tongue.) And so, as anomalous as these German bones seemed, most scholars had no trouble finding satisfying explanations. A leading theory held that this was the skeleton of a lost, bowlegged Cossack with rickets. The peculiar bony ridge over the man’s eyes was a result of the poor Cossack’s perpetually furrowing his brow in pain — because of the rickets.
One British geologist, William King, suspected something more radical. Instead of being the remains of an atypical human, they might have belonged to a typical member of an alternate humanity. In 1864, he published a paper introducing it as such — an extinct human species, the first ever discovered. King named this species after the valley where it was found, which itself had been named for the ecstatic poet who once wandered it. He called it Homo neanderthalensis: Neanderthal Man.
Who was Neanderthal Man? King felt obligated to describe him. But with no established techniques for interpreting archaeological material like the skull, he fell back on racism and phrenology. He focused on the peculiarities of the Neanderthal’s skull, including the “enormously projecting brow.” No living humans had skeletal features remotely like these, but King was under the impression that the skulls of contemporary African and Australian aboriginals resembled the Neanderthals’ more than “ordinary” white-people skulls. So extrapolating from his low opinion of what he called these “savage” races, he explained that the Neanderthal’s skull alone was proof of its moral “darkness” and stupidity. “The thoughts and desires which once dwelt within it never soared beyond those of a brute,” he wrote. Other scientists piled on. So did the popular press. We knew almost nothing about Neanderthals, but already we assumed they were ogres and losers.
The genesis of this idea, the historian Paige Madison notes, largely comes down to flukes of “timing and luck.” While King was working, another British scientist, George Busk, had the same suspicions about the Neander skull. He had received a comparable one, too, from the tiny British territory of Gibraltar. The Gibraltar skull was dug up long before the Neander Valley specimen surfaced, but local hobbyists simply labeled it “human skull” and forgot about it for the next 16 years. Its brow ridge wasn’t as prominent as the Neander skull’s, and its features were less imposing; it was a woman’s skull, it turns out. Busk dashed off a quick report but stopped short of naming the new creature. He hoped to study additional fossils and learn more. Privately, he considered calling it Homo calpicus, or Gibraltar Man.
So, what if Busk — “a conscientious naturalist too cautious to make premature claims,” as Madison describes him — had beaten King to publication? Consider how different our first impressions of a Gibraltar Woman might have been from those of Neanderthal Man: what feelings of sympathy, or even kinship, this other skull might have stirred.
There is a worldview, the opposite of Joachim Neander’s, that sees our planet as a product of only tumult and indifference. In such a world, it’s possible for an entire species to be ground into extinction by forces beyond its control and then, 40,000 years later, be dug up and made to endure an additional century and a half of bad luck and abuse.
That’s what happened to the Neanderthals. And it’s what we did to them. But recently, after we’d snickered over their skulls for so long, it stopped being clear who the boneheads were.
I’ll start with a confession, an embarrassing but relevant one, because I would come to see our history with Neanderthals as continually distorted by an unfortunate human tendency to believe in ideas that are, in reality, incorrect — and then to leverage that conviction into a feeling of superiority over other people. And in retrospect, I realize I demonstrated that same tendency myself at the beginning of this project. Because I don’t want to come off as self-righteous, or as pointing fingers, here goes:
Before traveling to Gibraltar last summer, I had no idea what Gibraltar was. Or rather, I was sure I knew what Gibraltar was, but I was wrong. I thought it was just that famous Rock — an unpopulated hunk of free-floating geology, which, if I’m being honest, I recognized mostly from the Prudential logo: that limestone protuberance at the mouth of the Mediterranean, that elephantine white molar jutting into the sky. True, I was traveling to Gibraltar on short notice; when I cold-called the director of the Gibraltar Museum, Clive Finlayson, he told me the museum happened to be starting its annual excavation of a Neanderthal cave there the following week and invited me to join. Still, even a couple of days before I left, when a friend told me she faintly remembered spending an afternoon in Gibraltar once as a teenager, I gently mansplained to her that I was pretty sure she was mistaken: Gibraltar, I told her, wasn’t somewhere you could just go. In my mind, I had privileged access. I pictured myself and Finlayson taking a special little boat.
In fact, Gibraltar is a peninsula connected to Spain. It’s a lively British overseas territory, with 30,000 citizens living in a city on its western side — a city with bakeries and clothing stores and tourists buying all the usual kitsch. Some unusual kitsch, too — like a laminated child’s place mat I spotted that, in a typical tourist destination, might say something unexceptional like SOMEONE WHO LOVES ME WENT TO GIBRALTAR, but here read WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER! BRITISH FOREVER!
The history of Gibraltar, given its strategic location, is a grinding saga of military sieges and ruthlessly contested changes in ownership. The residue of that strife, today, is a pronounced British patriotism and a never-ending exchange of slights with Spain, which still disputes Britain’s claim to the territory. After Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, in 2012, when Gibraltar projected towering images of Her Majesty on a Spain-facing side of the Rock — “a clear act of provocation,” one reporter called it — Spain began inspecting vehicle after vehicle at the border, backing up the line for hours, stranding the bulk of Gibraltar’s work force, who commute in every day. The afternoon I showed up, activists from a far-right Spanish political party had crossed into Gibraltar and hung an enormous Spanish flag high up on the Rock. This wasn’t just mischief. It was regarded as an act of symbolic terrorism. When one of the men appeared in court two days later, I read, a woman screamed at him, “Gibraltar will never be Spanish!” She sounded like that defiant place mat come to life.
I happened to arrive in Gibraltar the week of the Brexit vote. Up in England, people were thundering about the working class versus elites, sovereignty and immigration, warning that British identity was being fouled by the European project. But in Gibraltar — a far-flung, fully detached nib of Britain, flanked by water on two sides and Spain on the third — the question was less philosophical: If the United Kingdom left the European Union, Spain might seize the opportunity to isolate Gibraltar, leaving the territory to shrivel up, like a flap of dead skin. The Gibraltarian government had already called on the House of Commons for help. There was concern that Spain would jam up the border again and that it might happen right away.
Around town, “Remain” signs hung everywhere. The atmosphere was edgy, as though everyone was holding hands, waiting to see whether a meteor would hit. It was like the hairline cracks between so many self-designated Us-es and Thems seemed to be widening, and some corrosive, molten goop was seeping out: mutual dependence curdled with contempt. Clearly it was happening back home in America too.
All in all, it was a good week to spend in a cave.
Gorham’s Cave is on Gibraltar’s rough-hewed eastern coast: a tremendous opening at the bottom of the sheer face of the Rock, shadowy and hallowed-seeming, like a cathedral. Its mouth is 200 feet across at the base and 120 feet tall. It tapers asymmetrically like a crumpled wizard’s hat.
Neanderthals inhabited Gorham’s Cave on and off for 100,000 years, as well as a second cave next to it, called Vanguard Cave. The artifacts they left behind were buried as wind pushed sand into the cave. This created a high sloping dune, composed of hundreds of distinct layers of sand, each of which was once the surface of the dune, the floor of the cave. The dune is enormous. It reaches about two-thirds of the way up Gorham’s walls, spilling out of the cave’s mouth and onto the rocky beach, like a colossal cat’s tongue lapping at the Mediterranean. Every summer, since 1989, a team of archaeologists has returned to meticulously clear that sand away and recover the material inside. “I realized a long time ago, I won’t live to see the end of this project,” Finlayson, who leads the excavation, told me. “But I think we’re in a great moment. We’re beginning to understand these people after a century of putting them down as apelike brutes.”
Neanderthals are people, too — a separate, shorn-off branch of our family tree. We last shared an ancestor at some point between 500,000 and 750,000 years ago. Then our evolutionary trajectory split. We evolved in Africa, while the Neanderthals would live in Europe and Asia for 300,000 years. Or as little as 60,000 years. It depends whom you ask. It always does: The study of human origins, I found, is riddled with vehement disagreements and scientists who readily dismantle the premises of even the most straightforward-seeming questions. (In this case, the uncertainty rests, in part, on when, in this long evolutionary process, Neanderthals officially became “Neanderthals.”) What is clearer is that roughly 40,000 years ago, just as our own lineage expanded from Africa and took over Eurasia, the Neanderthals disappeared. Scientists have always assumed that the timing wasn’t coincidental. Maybe we used our superior intellects to outcompete the Neanderthals for resources; maybe we clubbed them all to death. Whatever the mechanism of this so-called replacement, it seemed to imply that our kind was somehow better than their kind. We’re still here, after all, and their path ended as soon as we crossed paths.
But Neanderthals weren’t the slow-witted louts we’ve imagined them to be — not just a bunch of Neanderthals. As a review of findings published last year put it, they were actually “very similar” to their contemporary Homo sapiens in Africa, in terms of “standard markers of modern cognitive and behavioral capacities.” We’ve always classified Neanderthals, technically, as human — part of the genus Homo. But it turns out they also did the stuff that, you know, makes us human.
Neanderthals buried their dead. They made jewelry and specialized tools. They made ocher and other pigments, perhaps to paint their faces or bodies — evidence of a “symbolically mediated worldview,” as archaeologists call it. Their tracheal anatomy suggests that they were capable of language and probably had high-pitched, raspy voices, like Julia Child. They manufactured glue from birch bark, which required heating the bark to at least 644 degrees Fahrenheit — a feat scientists find difficult to duplicate without a ceramic container. In Gibraltar, there’s evidence that Neanderthals extracted the feathers of certain birds — only dark feathers — possibly for aesthetic or ceremonial purposes. And while Neanderthals were once presumed to be crude scavengers, we now know they exploited the different terrains on which they lived. They took down dangerous game, including an extinct species of rhinoceros. Some ate seals and other marine mammals. Some ate shellfish. Some ate chamomile. (They had regional cuisines.) They used toothpicks.
Wearing feathers, eating seals — maybe none of this sounds particularly impressive. But it’s what our human ancestors were capable of back then too, and scientists have always considered such behavioral flexibility and complexity as signs of our specialness. When it came to Neanderthals, though, many researchers literally couldn’t see the evidence sitting in front of them. A lot of the new thinking about Neanderthals comes from revisiting material in museum collections, excavated decades ago, and re-examining it with new technology or simply with open minds. The real surprise of these discoveries may not be the competence of Neanderthals but how obnoxiously low our expectations for them have been — the bias with which too many scientists approached that other Us. One archaeologist called these researchers “modern human supremacists.”
Inside Gorham’s Cave, archaeologists were excavating what they called a hearth — not a physical fireplace but a spot in the sand where, around 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals lit a fire. Each summer, the Gibraltar Museum employs students from universities in England and Spain to work the dig, and now two young women — one from each country — sat cross-legged under work lights, clearing sand away with the edge of a trowel and a brush to leave a free-standing cube. A black band of charcoal ran through it.
The students worked scrupulously, watching for small animal bones or artifacts. They’d pulled out a butchered ibex mandible, a number of mollusk shells and pine-nut husks. They’d also found six chunks of fossilized hyena dung, as well as “débitage,” distinctive shards of flint left over when Neanderthals shattered larger pieces to make axes.
The cube of sand would eventually be wrapped in plaster and sent for analysis. The sand the two women were sweeping into their dustpans was transferred into plastic bags and marched out of the cave, down to the beach, where other students sieved it. Smaller bones caught in the sieve were bagged and labeled. Even the sand that passed through the sieve was saved and driven back to a lab at the museum, where I would later find three other students picking through it with magnifying glasses and tweezers, searching for tinier stuff — rodent teeth, sea-urchin spines — while listening to “Call Me Maybe.”
To an outsider, it looked preposterous. The archaeologists were cataloging and storing absolutely everything, treating this physical material as though it were digital information — JPEGs of itself. And yet they couldn’t afford not to: Everything a Neanderthal came into contact with was a valuable clue. (In 28 years of excavations here, archaeologists have yet to find a fossil of an actual Neanderthal.) “This is like putting together a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle where you only have five pieces,” Finlayson said. He somehow made this analogy sound exciting instead of hopeless.
By that point, the enormousness of what they didn’t know — what they could never know — had become a distraction for me. One of the dig’s lead archaeologists, Richard Jennings of Liverpool John Moores University, listed the many items they had found around that hearth. “And this is literally just from two squares!” he said. (A “square,” in archaeology, is one meter by one meter; sites are divided into grids of squares.) Then Jennings waved wordlessly at the rest of the sand-filled cave. Look at the big picture, he was saying; imagine what else we’ll find! There was also Vanguard Cave next door, an even more promising site, because while Gorham’s had been partly excavated by less meticulous scientists in the 1940s and ’50s, Finlayson’s team was the first to touch Vanguard. Already they had uncovered a layer of perfectly preserved mud there. (“We suspect, if there’s a place where you’re going to find the first Neanderthal footprint, it will be here,” Finlayson said.) The “resolution” of the caves was incredible; the wind blew sand in so fast that it preserved short periods, faithfully, like entries in a diary. Finlayson has described it as “the longest and most detailed record of [Neanderthals’] way of life that is currently available.”
The openings to Gibraltar caves, including Gorham’s and Vanguard.Credit...Jaap Scheeren for The New York Times
This was the good news. And yet there were more than 20 other nearby caves that the Gibraltar Neanderthals might have used, and they were now underwater, behind us. When sea levels rose around 20,000 years ago, the Mediterranean drowned them. It also drowned the wooded savanna between Gorham’s and the former coastline — where, presumably, the Neanderthals had spent an even larger share of their lives and left even more artifacts.
So yes, Jennings was right: There was a lot of cave left to dig through. But it was like looking for needles in a haystack, and the entire haystack was merely the one needle they had managed to find in an astronomically larger haystack. And most of that haystack was now inaccessible forever. I could tell it wasn’t productive to dwell on the problem at this scale, while picking pine-nut husks from the hearth, but there it was.
“Look, you can almost see what’s happening,” Finlayson eventually said. “The fire and the charcoal, the embers scattering.” It was true. If you followed that stratum of sand away from the hearth, you could see, embedded in the wall behind us, black flecks where the smoke and cinders from this fire had blown. Suddenly, it struck me — though it should have earlier — that what we were looking at were the remnants of a single event: a specific fire, on a specific night, made by specific Neanderthals. Maybe this won’t sound that profound, but it snapped that prehistoric abstraction into focus. This wasn’t just a “hearth,” I realized; it was a campfire.
Finlayson began narrating the scene for me. A few Neanderthals cooked the ibex they had hunted and the mussels and nuts they had foraged and then, after dinner, made some tools around the fire. After they went to sleep and the fire died out, a hyena slinked in to scavenge scraps from the ashes and took a poop. Then — perhaps that same night — the wind picked up and covered everything with the fine layer of sand that these students were now brushing away.
While we stood talking, one of the women uncovered a small flint ax, called a Levallois flake. After 50,000 years, the edge was still sharp. They let me touch it.
One of the earliest authorities on Neanderthals was a Frenchman named Marcellin Boule. A lot of what he said was wrong.
In 1911, Boule began publishing his analysis of the first nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton ever discovered, which he named Old Man of La Chapelle, after the limestone cave where it was found. Laboring to reconstruct the Old Man’s anatomy, he deduced that its head must have been slouched forward, its spine hunched and its toes spread like an ape’s. Then, having reassembled the Neanderthal this way, Boule insulted it. This “brutish” and “clumsy” posture, he wrote, clearly indicated a lack of morals and a lifestyle dominated by “functions of a purely vegetative or bestial kind.” A colleague of Boule’s went further, claiming that Neanderthals usually walked on all fours and never laughed: “Man-ape had no smile.” Boule was part of a movement trying to reconcile natural selection with religion; by portraying Neanderthals as closer to animals than to us, he could protect the ideal of a separate, immaculate human lineage. When he consulted with an artist to make a rendering of the Neanderthal, it came out looking like a furry, mean gorilla.
Neanderthal fossils kept surfacing in Europe, and scholars like Boule were scrambling to make sense of them, improvising what would later grow into a new interdisciplinary field, now known as paleoanthropology. The evolution of that science was haphazard and often comically unscientific. An exhaustive history by Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman describes how Neanderthals became “mirrors that reflected, in all their awfulness and awesomeness, the nature and humanity of those who touched them.” That included a lot of human blundering. It became clear only in 1957, for example — 46 years after Boule, and after several re-examinations of the Old Man’s skeleton — that Boule’s particular Neanderthal, which led him to imagine all Neanderthals as stooped-over oafs, actually just had several deforming injuries and severe osteoarthritis.
Still, Boule’s influence was long-lasting. Over the years, his ideologically tainted image of Neanderthals was often refracted through the lens of other ideologies, occasionally racist ones. In 1930, the prominent British anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith, writing in The New York Times, channeled Boule’s work to justify colonialism. For Keith, the replacement of an ancient, inferior species like Neanderthals by newer, heartier Homo sapiens proved that Britain’s actions in Australia — “The white man ... replacing the most ancient type of brown man known to us” — was part of a natural order that had been operating for millenniums.
It’s easy to get snooty about all this unenlightened paleoanthropology of the past. But all sciences operate by trying to fit new data into existing theories. And this particular science, for which the “data” has always consisted of scant and somewhat inscrutable bits of rock and fossil, often has to lean on those meta-narratives even more heavily. “Assumptions, theories, expectations,” the University of Barcelona archaeologist João Zilhão says, “all must come into play a lot, because you are interpreting data that do not speak for themselves.”
Imagine, for example, working in a cave without any skulls or other easily distinguishable fossils and trying to figure out if you’re looking at a Neanderthal settlement or a more recent, modern human one. In the past, scientists might turn to the surrounding artifacts, interpreting more primitive-looking tools as evidence of Neanderthals and more advanced-looking tools as evidence of early modern humans. But working that way, it’s easy to miss evidence of Neanderthals’ resemblance to us, because, as soon as you see it, you assume they were us. So many techniques similarly hinge on interpretation and judgment, even perfectly empirical-sounding ones, like “morphometric analysis” — identifying fossils as belonging to one species rather than another by comparing particular parts of their anatomy — and radiocarbon dating. How the material to be dated is sampled and how results are calibrated are susceptible to drastic revision and bitter disagreement. (What’s more, because of an infuriating quirk of physics, the effectiveness of radiocarbon dating happens to break down around 40,000 years ago — right around the time of the Neanderthal extinction. One of our best tools for looking into the past becomes unreliable at exactly the moment we’re most interested in examining.)
Ultimately, a bottomless relativism can creep in: tenuous interpretations held up by webs of other interpretations, each strung from still more interpretations. Almost every archaeologist I interviewed complained that the field has become “overinterpreted” — that the ratio of physical evidence to speculation about that evidence is out of whack. Good stories can generate their own momentum. Adrie (left) and Alfons Kennis with a figure they made for the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany.Credit...Jaap Scheeren for The New York Times
Starting in the 1920s, older and more exciting hominid fossils, like Homo erectus, began surfacing in Africa and Asia, and the field soon shifted its focus there. The Washington University anthropologist Erik Trinkaus, who began his career in the early ’70s, told me, “When I started working on Neanderthals, nobody really cared about them.” The liveliest question about Neanderthals was still the first one: Were they our direct ancestors or the endpoint of a separate evolutionary track? Scientists called this question “the Neanderthal Problem.” Some of the theories worked up to answer it encouraged different visions of Neanderthal intelligence and behavior. The “Multiregional Model,” for example, which had us descending from Neanderthals, was more inclined to see them as capable, sympathetic and fundamentally human; the opposing “Out of Africa” hypothesis, which held that we moved in and replaced them, cast them as comparatively inferior.
For decades, when evidence of a more advanced Neanderthal way of life turned up, it was often explained away, or mobbed by enough contrary or undermining interpretations that, over time, it never found real purchase. Some findings broke through more than others, however, like the discovery of what was essentially a small Neanderthal cemetery, in Shanidar Cave, in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan. There had been many compelling instances of Neanderthals’ burying their dead, but Shanidar was harder to ignore, especially after soil samples revealed the presence of huge amounts of pollen. This was interpreted as the remains of a funerary floral arrangement. An archaeologist at the center of this work, Ralph Solecki, published a book called “Shanidar: The First Flower People.” It was 1971 — the Age of Aquarius. Those flowers, he’d go on to write, proved that Neanderthals “had ‘soul.’ ”
Then again, Solecki’s idea was eventually discredited. In 1999, a more thorough analysis of the Shanidar grave site found that Neanderthals almost certainly did not leave flowers there. The pollen had been tracked in, thousands of years later, by burrowing, gerbil-like rodents. (That said, even a half-century later, there are still paleoanthropologists at work on this question. It might not have been gerbils; it may have been bees.)
As more supposed anomalies surfaced, they became harder to brush off. In 1996, the paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin and others used CT scanning technology to re-examine a bone fragment found in a French cave decades earlier, alongside a raft of advanced tools and artifacts, associated with the so-called Châtelperronian industry, which archaeologists always presumed was the work of early modern humans. Now Hublin’s analysis identified the bone as belonging to a Neanderthal. But rather than reascribe the Châtelperronian industry to Neanderthals, Hublin chalked up his findings to “acculturation”: Surely the Neanderthals must have learned how to make this stuff by watching us.
“To me,” says Zilhão, the University of Barcelona archaeologist, “there was a logical shock: If the paradigm forces you to say something like this, there must be something wrong with the paradigm.” Zilhão published a stinging critique challenging the field to shake off its “anti-Neanderthal prejudice.” Papers were fired back and forth, igniting what Zilhão calls “a 20-year war” and counting. Then, in the middle of that war, geneticists shook up the paradigm completely.
A group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, led by Svante Paabo, had been assembling a draft sequence of a Neanderthal genome, using DNA recovered from bones. Their findings were published in 2010. It had already become clear by then that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals appeared in Eurasia separately — “Out of Africa was essentially right” — but Paabo’s work revealed that before the Neanderthals disappeared, the two groups mated. Even today, 40,000 years after our gene pools stopped mixing, most living humans still carry Neanderthal DNA, making up roughly 1 to 2 percent of our total genomes. The data shows that we also apparently bred with other hominids, like the Denisovans, about which very little is known.
It was staggering; even Paabo couldn’t bring himself to believe it at first. But the results were the results, and they carried a sort of empirical magnetism that archaeological evidence lacks. “Geneticists are much more powerful, numerous and incomparably better funded than anyone else dealing with this stuff,” Zilhão said. He joked: “Their aura is kind of miraculous. It’s a bit like receiving the Ten Commandments from God.” Paabo’s work, and a continuing wave of genomic research, has provided clarity but also complexity, recasting our oppositional, zero-sum relationship into something more communal and collaborative — and perhaps not just on the genetic level. The extent of the interbreeding supported previous speculation, by a minority of paleoanthropologists, that there might have been cases of Neanderthals and modern humans living alongside each other, intermeshed, for centuries, and that generations of their offspring had found places in those communities, too. Then again, it’s also possible that some of the interbreeding was forced.
Paabo now recommends against imagining separate species of human evolution altogether: not an Us and a Them, but one enormous “metapopulation” composed of shifting clusters of essentially human-ish things that periodically coincided in time and space and, when they happened to bump into one another, occasionally had sex.
Lunch happened at the mouth of Gorham’s Cave, out in the sun. I ate a sandwich on a log, facing the sea, alongside Jennings and a few of his Liverpool students, while the young men and women from Spain mingled behind us, laughing and stretching and helping one another crack their backs. The language barrier seemed to discourage the two cohorts from talking much. And yet the students lived together during the excavation and had somehow achieved a muffled camaraderie.
Even Jennings and his counterpart, José María Gutiérrez López, a veteran archaeologist from a museum in Cádiz, had a somewhat similar dynamic, despite working closely together for many summers at Gorham’s. Neither was terribly fluent in the other’s language, but their silence, by this point, seemed warm and knowing. Waiting for our ride at the end of one workday, I noticed them staring at a plastic bag snagged in the concertina wire above an old military gate. The bag had been there for a long, long time, Jennings told me. Then he turned and uttered, “Cinco años?” Gutiérrez López smiled. “Sí,” he said, nodding.
I, meanwhile, felt compelled to test out all of this as a model for human-Neanderthal relations. That contact obsessed me: What would it have been like to look out over a grassy plain and watch parallel humanity pass by? Scientists often turn to historical first contacts as frames of reference, like the arrival of Europeans among Native Americans, or Captain Cook landing in Australia — largely histories of violence and subjugation. But as Zilhão points out, typically one of those two cultures set out to conquer the other. “Those people were conscious that they’d come from somewhere else,” he told me. “They were a product of a civilization that had books, that had studied their past.” Homo sapiens encountering Neanderthals would have been different: They met uncoupled from politics and history; neither identified as part of a network of millions of supposedly more advanced people. And so, as Finlayson put it to me: “Each valley could have told a different story. In one, they may have hit each other over the head. In another, they may have made love. In another, they ignored each other.”
It’s a kind of coexistence that our modern imaginations may no longer be sensitive enough to envision. So much of our identity as a species is tied up in our anomalousness, in our dominion over others. But that narcissistic self-image is an exceedingly recent privilege. (“Outside the world of Tolkienesque fantasy literature, we tend to think that it is normal for there to be just one human species on Earth at a time,” the writers Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse explain. “The past 20 or 30 millennia, however, have been the exception.”) Now, eating lunch, I considered that the co-occurrence of humans and Neanderthals hadn’t been so trippy or profound after all. Maybe it looked as mundane as this: two groups, lingering on a beach, only sort of acknowledging each other. Maybe the many millenniums during which we shared Eurasia was, much of the time, like a superlong elevator ride with strangers.
Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum.Credit...Jaap Scheeren for The New York Times
Some paleoanthropologists are starting to reimagine the extinction of Neanderthals as equally prosaic: not the culmination of some epic clash of civilizations but an aggregate result of a long, ecological muddle. Strictly speaking, extinction is what happens after a species fails to maintain a higher proportion of births to deaths — it’s a numbers game. And so the real competition between Neanderthals and early modern humans wasn’t localized quarrels for food or territory but a quiet, millenniums-long demographic marathon: each species repopulating itself, until one fell so far behind that it vanished. And we had a big head start. “When modern humans came,” notes Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at Britain’s Natural History Museum, “there just weren’t that many Neanderthals around.”
For millenniums, some scientists believe, before modern humans poured in from Africa, the climate in Europe was exceptionally unstable. The landscape kept flipping between temperate forest and cold, treeless steppe. The fauna that Neanderthals subsisted on kept migrating away, faster than they could. Though Neanderthals survived this turbulence, they were never able to build up their numbers. (Across all of Eurasia, at any point in history, says John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “there probably weren’t enough of them to fill an N.F.L. stadium.”) With the demographics so skewed, Stringer went on, even the slightest modern human advantage would be amplified tremendously: a single innovation, something like sewing needles, might protect just enough babies from the elements to lower the infant mortality rate and allow modern humans to conclusively overtake the Neanderthals. And yet Stringer is careful not to conflate innovation with superior intelligence. Innovation, too, can be a function of population size. “We live in an age where information, where good ideas, spread like wildfire, and we build on them,” Stringer told me. “But it wasn’t like that 50,000 years ago.” The more members your species has, the more likely one member will stumble on a useful new technology — and that, once stumbled upon, the innovation will spread; you need sufficient human tinder for those sparks of culture to catch.
“There was nothing inevitable about modern human success,” Stringer says. “It was luck.” We didn’t defeat the Neanderthals; we just swamped them. Trinkaus compares it to how European wildcats are currently disappearing, absorbed into much larger populations of house cats gone feral. It wasn’t a flattering analogy — we are the house cats — but that was Trinkaus’s point: “I think a lot of this is basically banal,” he says.
Showing me around the Gibraltar Museum one morning, Finlayson described the petering out of Neanderthals on the Rock with unnerving pathos. Gibraltar, with its comparatively stable climate, would have been one of their last refuges, he explained, and he likened the population there to critically endangered species today, like snow leopards or imperiled butterflies: living relics carrying on in small, fragmented populations long after they’ve passed a genetic point of no return. “They became a ghost species,” Finlayson said.
We happened to be standing in front of two Neanderthals, exquisitely lifelike sculptures the museum unveiled last spring, on a sweep of sand in their own austere gallery. They were scientific reconstructions, extrapolated by artists from casts of actual fossils. (These two were based on the only Neanderthal skulls ever recovered in Gibraltar: that first woman’s skull, sent to George Busk in 1864, and another, of a child, unearthed in 1926.) They were called Nana and Flint. Finlayson’s wife, Geraldine, and son, Stewart — both scientists who work closely with him at the museum — had helped him come up with the names. The boy had his arms thrown around Nana’s waist, his cheek on her thigh. He was half-hiding himself behind her leg, as kids do, but also stared out, straight at us, slightly alarmed, or helpless. “I don’t get tired of looking at them,” Finlayson said.
He had commissioned the Neanderthals from Dutch artists known as Kennis & Kennis, and he was initially taken aback by the woman’s posture in their sketches. She stood oddly, with her arms crossed in front of her chest, resting on opposite shoulders, as if she were mid-Macarena. But Kennis & Kennis barraged him with ethnographic photos: real hunter-gatherer people standing just like this, or even more strangely, their hands behind their necks or slung over their heads. As it happens, the artists had an intense personal interest in where human beings leave their hands when they don’t have pockets.
I’d never thought about this before — I’ve always had pockets — and I wondered if artists might expose these perceptual bubbles more pointedly than archaeologists. Kennis & Kennis appeared to be major players in the tiny field of Paleolithic reconstruction. Scientists who had worked with them encouraged me to seek them out. “They’re great people,” one archaeologist told me. “Hyperactive. Like rubber balls.”
The Kennis brothers, Adrie and Alfons, are each 50 years old: identical twins. They are sturdy, attractive men, with dark, wildly swirling hair, and live in the small Dutch city of Arnhem, southeast of Amsterdam. When I arrived at Adrie’s house last summer, I found Alfons at the end of the driveway, glasses sliding down his nose, carefully filling a crack in the robin’s-egg-blue butt cheek of a silicon Neanderthal mold.
Kennis & Kennis had gradually co-opted Adrie’s house as a second studio. Most of their work and materials were here: full-scale headless bodies of various human species and a wall of shelves filled with skulls and heads. The heads were frighteningly realistic, with glass eyes and fleshy faces that begged to be touched. When the brothers fly around Europe to pitch to museums, they take these heads with them, like salesmen’s samples. “On the airplane! We have heads!” Adrie shouted. “They scan things!” Alfons shouted. And slowly I understood: The brothers thought it was hilarious that airport security never questioned them about their duffel bags full of heads. “I never have to open my bags!” Adrie said, then he scampered to the wall, where a particular head had caught his eye: very dark-skinned, with a rough, bushy beard and rawness in its upper lip — a reconstruction of a primitive Homo sapiens skull found in Morocco. Adrie held the head in his palm and hollered, “Bowling!” while pretending to bowl with it. Then he laughed and laughed and laughed.
That was how it went for the rest of the day. They spoke in a bifurcated riot, seldom finishing sentences, just skipping ahead once they had spit out the key words. And if a thought escaped them or their English faltered, they didn’t go silent; instead, they repeated the last word, or made a strange guttural drone, as if thrusting some heavy weight over their heads, to fill the space.
Their first big commission came in 2006, for the Neanderthal Museum, on the site of Neander Valley. It emerged as a jovial, half-smirking old man, with woefulness, or maybe just exhaustion, behind his eyes. That jolt of Neanderthal individuality has been a trademark of their work ever since. It elevates Neanderthals out of a single homogeneous abstraction and endows them with personhood. (At one point, Adrie described watching a neighbor spend an entire day pressure-washing each brick of his driveway. He had an epiphany: “All the types of people around us, there must have been Neanderthals just like them.” Alfons added: “Neanderthal neat freaks! Neanderthal Bill Gates!”) What the brothers want, they told me, is for the viewer to catch herself relating to the Neanderthal — to recognize, in a visceral way, that Neanderthals sit at the fragile edge of our own identities. To feel that, Adrie explained, “they need to look you in the eye.”
They were obsessed — the only word for it — and have been since age 7, when Alfons found a picture of a Neanderthal skeleton in a book, and it instantly possessed them both. They spent a lot of time at their parents’ restaurant, after school and on weekends: With nothing to do, they started drawing Neanderthals. They drew feverishly, combatively, each brother keenly aware of whose rib cage looked brawnier, who had rendered more beautiful shadows on his Neanderthal’s upper lip. “We were both the dumbest guys in the whole school!” Alfons said. “We couldn’t count!” Drawing was all they knew how to do. As young men, they tried to teach art but couldn’t find steady employment. Their family told them to give up their crazy preoccupation. They wouldn’t. They made art at night and took custodial jobs at a psychiatric hospital. They organized the Christmas talent show and played Ping-Pong with the residents.
Initially they were painters, not sculptors. They made three-dimensional reconstructions only to have lifelike models to paint: They were that meticulous, that fixated on knowing how the musculature of a Neanderthal hung off its skeleton. Because they had to produce a three-dimensional individual, the brothers were forced to make decisions about what paleoanthropologists had the luxury of describing as spectra of variation. Geneticists can suggest a probable scope of skin and hair colors. But the brothers must imagine the wear on a particular Neanderthal’s skin after a hard life outside, or the abuse his toenails would take. And would Neanderthals wear ponytails? Would they shear their bangs away, to get their hair out of their faces? “Every culture does something with their hair!” Alfons insisted. “There’s no culture that does nothing with their hair.”
This uncorked a frantic seminar on known global hairstyles of the last several thousand years. They began pulling up photos on Adrie’s laptop, dozens of them, from anthropological archives or stills from old ethnographic films. These were some of the same photos they had shown Finlayson. The brothers had pored over them for years but still gasped or bellowed now as each new, improbable human form materialized. The pictures showed a panorama of divergent body types and grooming: spiky eyebrows; astonishingly asymmetrical breasts; a towering aboriginal man with the chiseled torso of an American underwear model, but two twigs for legs; a Hottentot woman with an extraordinarily convex rear end. “People would never let us make buttocks like this!” Alfons said regretfully. “All this variation! It’s beautiful!” shouted Adrie, refusing to look away from the screen. He had to look: These were reaches of reality that our minds didn’t travel to on their own. “If you live in the West, you’d never imagine,” he went on. The brothers’ delight seemed to come from feeling all these superficial differences quiver against a profound, self-evident sameness. Finally, Adrie turned to me and said very seriously, “These are all Homo sapiens.”
They showed me more photos. “It’s real, it’s real, it’s real!” Alfons kept shouting. Adrie said, “Unimaginable, unimaginable, unimaginable!” It only registered later: I had spent the day with identical twins who, since childhood, have been stupefied by how different human beings can be.
At the rear of Gorham’s Cave, past the hearth the team was excavating, there was a tall metal staircase. It led up to a long catwalk, which led to a locked steel gate. I waited there one morning while Finlayson fumbled around in his pocket. Then he turned his key.
The excavation had worked through this narrowed rear chamber of the cave years earlier and discovered, at the end of the 2012 season, an engraving on the floor: a crosshatched pattern of 13 grooves in the bedrock. A tide of specialists flowed into Gorham’s. They determined that the engraving was made at least 39,000 years ago and ruled out its having been created inadvertently — left over after skinning an animal, say. In controlled experiments, it took between 188 and 317 strokes with a flint tool to create the entire figure. “What we’ve always said,” Finlayson explained, “is it’s intentional and it’s not functional. You can call that art, if you like.”
The finding was published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. The news media called the engraving “the hashtag.” One scientist described the elaborate crosshatch as watershed evidence of Neanderthals’ capacity for “complex symbolic thought” and “abstract expression.” But several archaeologists told me they believe that there are many clearer signs of Neanderthals’ capacity for complex cognition and symbolism, including a discovery in Southern France last year that seemed to dwarf the hashtag’s significance. (More than 1,000 feet into the Bruniquel Cave, Neanderthals assembled two rings of 400 deliberately broken stalagmites, with other material piled and propped around it — like a labyrinth, or a shrine.) But Finlayson was undaunted. He turned the hashtag into a logo for the Neanderthal-centric rebranding of his museum. There was a hashtag decal on the van he picked me up in every morning.
We stood and talked for a while until, finally, with Richard Attenborough-ish aplomb, Finlayson lifted a tarp and showed it to me. It did not make a tremendous impact at first — it was lines in rock. But Finlayson went on, pointing to a spot near the entrance to this isolated anteroom, a few feet across from the engraving, where the team had excavated another hearth. Neanderthals built fires in that exact spot, on and off, for 8,000 years, he said — until their disappearance from Gibraltar. But few animal bones were recovered here; it wasn’t a place they cooked. And the location of the fire was also puzzling: Neanderthals usually situated fires at the fronts of caves, to control smoke. And yet, Finlayson explained, “if you look up, this has a natural chimney.” We flung our heads back: A chute coursed through the high, craggy ceiling above us.
It seemed, Finlayson explained, that the Neanderthals did their butchering and cooking at the front of Gorham’s, then retired here at night. Lighting a fire at this hearth would block the narrowest point in the cave, sealing off this chamber from predators. You could hang out here, Finlayson said, “have a late-night snack or something,” then head to bed. “See there?” he said, motioning to a smaller opening to our right. It led to a second room, similar to this one. “This,” Finlayson said, “is the bedroom.”
I looked again at the hashtag. It wasn’t on the cave floor, exactly, as it was usually described, but on a broad ledge, a foot or two off the ground. It made for a perfect bench, and it was suddenly easy to imagine a Neanderthal sitting on it, in ideal proximity to the fire. For all I knew, the hashtag marked his or her favorite seat.
But Finlayson wasn’t done. After the Neanderthal artifacts disappear from Gorham’s sediment layers, there’s a gap of many thousand years — a thick stack of empty sand. Then other artifacts appear: Modern humans occupied the cave and built a fire here, too, just a couple of feet from the Neanderthals’ hearth. They used the bedroom annex as well. They left a cave painting on the wall in there: a gorgeous red stag, indisputably recognizable to us — their descendants — as art.
Another 18,000 years passed, give or take. The Phoenicians came. And they left offerings back here; there were shards of their ceramics under the catwalk we had just crossed. Then, 2,000 years after that, in 1907, a certain Captain A. Gorham of Britain’s Second Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers arrived. Gorham didn’t discover Gorham’s Cave, Finlayson told me; it had always been impossible to miss. “That’s what he found,” Finlayson said. “That’s really Gorham’s Cave.” He pointed to the bedroom, and we both turned, bathing it with our headlamps. Beside the entrance was written, in big block letters, GORHAM’S CAVE 1907, with a chunky black arrow pointing to the doorway. Gorham had written his name directly over the spot where, some 39,000 years earlier, a Neanderthal had made his or her own mark.
The full sweep and synchronicity of this history hadn’t seemed to occur to Finlayson before. Hesitantly, he said, “Maybe there are special places in the world that have universal human appeal.” I felt a similar, uncanny rush when I noticed that, at some point while he talked, we had each instinctually taken a seat on the rock ledge, next to the hashtag, and were now sitting side by side, staring into space where the two ancient campfires once burned.
It’s not an especially spiritual experience when one human being walks into another human being’s kitchen for the first time and simply knows where the silverware drawer is. At the back of Gorham’s, though, that intuition was spread across two distinct kinds of humans and tens of thousands of years. Ultimately, why we are here and the Neanderthals are not can no longer be explained in a way that implies that our existence is particularly meaningful or secure. But at least moments like this placed our existence inside some longer, less-conditional-seeming continuity.
It was the day of the Brexit vote. After re-emerging from the cave with Finlayson, I would spend the rest of the afternoon rejiggering my travel plans in a mild panic, trying to catch a ride out of Gibraltar and into Spain that night, so that if the Spanish exacted a retaliatory border-clogging after the results were announced, I could still make my flight home from Malaga the next day. I won’t describe the scenes I saw that morning — the blankness on people’s faces at the airport, phone calls I overheard — except to say that when I woke up on Nov. 9, after our own election, I felt equipped with at least a faint frame of reference. Reality seemed heightened and a little dangerous, because for so many people, including me, it had broken away from our expectations. We had misunderstood the present in the same way archaeologists can misunderstand the past. What was possible was suddenly exposed as grossly insufficient, because, to borrow Finlayson’s metaphor, we never imagined that the few jigsaw puzzle pieces we based it on constituted such a tiny part of the whole.
Even some on the winning sides seemed similarly stunned and adrift. Many, though, just felt vindicated. Later that summer, I came across an essay for a British weekly by the actress Elizabeth Hurley, a fervent Leave supporter, who was now doubling down. “Knock yourselves out calling us ill-educated Neanderthals,” she wrote, “and spit a bit more venom and vitriol our way. You are showing yourselves in all your meanspirited, round-headed elitist glory.”
When I read that, I took genuine umbrage — but on the Neanderthals’ behalf. And while I hate to admit it, I also felt a cheap but delicious tingle of smugness, because I now knew that “Neanderthal” wasn’t the insult Hurley thought it was — though this, I simultaneously realized, also closed a certain self-reinforcing loop and promoted, in me, the very round-headed elitist glory Hurley was incensed by, thus deepening the divide. It was dizzying and sad and maybe inevitably human, but still no help to us at all.
Ralph Solecki, Who Found Humanity in Neanderthals, Dies at 101 Ralph Solecki in 1961, when he was an associate professor of anthropology at Columbia University. His research pointed to the possibility that Neanderthals had humanity — as he put it, that they “had a ‘soul.’”Credit...Columbia University
Ralph Solecki, an archaeologist whose research helped debunk the view of Neanderthals as heartless and brutish half-wits and inspired a popular series of novels about prehistoric life, died on March 20 in Livingston, N.J. He was 101.
The cause was pneumonia, his son William said.
Starting in the mid-1950s, leading teams from Columbia University, Dr. Solecki discovered the fossilized skeletons of eight adult and two infant Neanderthals who had lived tens of thousands of years ago in what is now northern Iraq.
Dr. Solecki, who was also a Smithsonian Institution anthropologist at the time, said physical evidence at Shanidar Cave, where the skeletons were found, suggested that Neanderthals had tended to the weak and the wounded, and that they had also buried their dead with flowers, which were placed ornamentally and possibly selected for their therapeutic benefits.
The exhumed bones of a man, named Shanidar 3, who had been blind in one eye and missing his right arm but who had survived for years after he was hurt, indicated that fellow Neanderthals had helped provide him with sustenance and other support.
“Although the body was archaic, the spirit was modern,” Dr. Solecki wrote in the magazine Science in 1975.
Dr. Solecki in 1956 at Shanidar Cave in Iraq. His excavations there uncovered the skeletal remains of Neanderthals.Credit...Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki papers at the National Anthropological Archives
Large amounts of pollen found in the soil at a grave site suggested that bodies might have been ceremonially entombed with bluebonnet, hollyhock, grape hyacinth and other flowers — a theory that is still being explored and amplified. (Some researchers hypothesized that the pollen might have been carried by rodents or bees, but Dr. Solecki’s theory has become widely accepted.) “The association of flowers with Neanderthals adds a whole new dimension to our knowledge of his humanness, indicating he had a ‘soul,’” Dr. Solecki wrote.
Moreover, if the flowers were confirmed to have been selected for their medicinal value, he told the New York Academy of Sciences in 1976, the discovery would indicate that “the Neanderthals possessed a mutually comprehensive communication system — in short, a spoken language.”
The very title of Dr. Solecki’s first book, published in 1971, made his rehabilitative effort clear. It was called “Shanidar: The First Flower People.”
His other books include “Shanidar: The Humanity of Neanderthal Man” (1972) and “The Proto-Neolithic Cemetery in Shanidar Cave” (2004), the latter book written with his wife and fellow archaeologist, Rose L. Solecki, and Anagnostis P. Agelarakis.
Scientists remain awed by what Dr. Solecki discovered and, armed with the latest technology, are still interpreting what the physical evidence of the skeletons and the multiple burials implies. Dr. Solecki measuring a flint scraper, an artifact uncovered in ancient caves in Lebanon, in 1970.Credit...Columbia University
“What is clear is that the cluster of bodies at the ‘flower burial’ came to rest in a very restricted area, but not quite at the same geologic level, and therefore likely not quite at the same time,” the archaeologist Christopher Hunt was quoted as saying in Science this year. “So that might point to some form of intentionality and group memory as Neanderthals returned to the same spot over generations.”
The novelist Jean M. Auel was inspired by Dr. Solecki’s research to write “The Clan of the Cave Bear” (1980), the first in her “Earth’s Children” series of narratives on the evolution of humankind. Ms. Auel said Shanidar 3 was the inspiration for the character Creb.
In the early 1950s, Dr. Solecki was a Columbia graduate student on another excavation in the mountainous Kurdish region of Iraq. Seeking a potentially fruitful dig site, he was directed by locals to the rugged Great Zab River valley and Shanidar Cave, in the Zagros Mountains.
The cave’s portal, 2,500 feet above sea level, opened onto a cavernous 3,000-square-foot interior with 20-foot-high ceilings. His discovery of remains and artifacts there would make it a singular Neanderthal site in Western Asia.
In 1955, Dr. Solecki married Rose M. Lilien and returned with her to Iraq, where the couple lived in a stone police barracks without running water or toilets. Their quarters were barely better than the natural cave that Dr. Solecki estimated had been home to some 3,000 generations. It provided researchers with what he described as “a consecutive, slow-motion picture” of humanity’s evolution. Dr. Solecki in 2005 with a trade pipe from the 17th century that was found at Fort Massapeag in Massapequa, N.Y., on Long Island. Dr. Solecki’s master’s thesis was on another nearby fort. Credit...Marko Georgiev for The New York Times
“Rarely do archaeologists have a chance to see so clear a succession of man’s development over so long a period,” he told Scientific American in 1957.
He unearthed the bones in a stratum beginning 16 feet beneath the surface of the cave and reaching to 45 feet below it, where the bedrock begins.
The first skeleton Dr. Solecki found was of a man who had probably been asleep in the cave when he was struck and killed by limestone rocks loosened by an earthquake.
Another man appeared to have been buried by fellow Neanderthals. A third, excavated in 1957, lived between 35,000 and 45,000 years ago. He was almost 50 years old and, with signs of a deep cut in his left rib from a pointed stone or blade, might be the oldest known murder victim. (His remains are now at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.)
When Dr. Solecki and his wife returned to the site again in 1960, they found a fourth skeleton, with evidence of funerary flowers or pollen from herbs possibly used as medicine.
“Someone in the last ice age must have ranged the mountainside in the mournful task of collecting flowers for the dead,” Dr. Solecki wrote. “It seems logical to us today that pretty things like flowers should be placed with the cherished dead, but to find flowers in a Neanderthal burial that took place about 60,000 years ago is another matter.” The Neanderthals survived until roughly 28,000 years ago, when the more adaptable Cro-Magnon population of Homo sapiens began to predominate.
Stefan Rafael Solecki was born on Oct. 15, 1917, in Brooklyn to Polish immigrants. His father, Casimir, sold insurance. His mother, Mary (Tarnowska) Solecki, was a homemaker.
When he was about 10, his interest in archaeology was piqued by newspaper reports of treasures being unearthed from King Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt. He began his own excavations after his father bought a house in Cutchogue, N.Y., on Long Island’s North Fork. After spring plowing, he and his friends would search for Native American arrowheads and other artifacts.
After graduating from Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, he received a bachelor of science degree in geology from City College of New York in 1942.
During World War II he served in the Army in Europe, where he was wounded. He received a master’s degree from Columbia University; his thesis was on the 17th-century Fort Corchaug, near the family’s Long Island home, which was later designated a National Historic Landmark.
Dr. Solecki began surveying historic sites in Iraq in 1951, as an associate curator at the Smithsonian Institution. (His archaeologist’s trowel is now part of its collection.) He returned on three expeditions, one on a Fulbright fellowship. He received a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia in 1958.
Dr. Solecki, who was also renowned for his excavations in Sudan and Alaska and led Columbia expeditions in the Middle East and Africa, was the Smithsonian’s curator of archaeology from 1958 to 1959. He taught at Columbia from 1959 to 1988. In 1990, he and his wife, who also has a doctorate in archaeology, joined the faculty of Texas A&M University.They moved to New Jersey in 2000 to be closer to their sons.
In addition to his wife and his son William, a geographer, professor at Hunter College and founder and director emeritus of the City University of New York Institute for Sustainable Cities, Dr. Solecki is survived by another son, John, a United Nations refugee official who was kidnapped and held for two months in Pakistan in 2009; and two grandchildren.
A version of this article appears in print on April 17, 2019, Section B, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Ralph Solecki, 101, Archaeologist Who Uncovered the Inner Life of Neanderthals. Remembering Ralph S. Solecki, Who Discovered the Shanidar Neanderthals, the Hessian Hat Plate, and Ancient Maspeth Ralph Solecki Passed Away on March 20, 2019. He was 101 Years Old.
The riders found their seats as they piled into the subway car on a pleasant afternoon in 1985. Getting comfortable (no one had to stand), we were soon off on our return trip from Red Hook, Brooklyn to the EPA Region II offices in Manhattan. At first, I barely noticed one of my fellow passengers sitting a little away from me, but eventually I took in his distinctive way of dressing: khaki pants, khaki shirt, and red beret. I was thinking he was a Guardian Angel. Then I noticed the writing on the shirt. It said, “Angel Guardians.” Not Guardian Angels, but Angel Guardians. I was confused. Could he be a competing vigilante, or was he an imposter taking advantage of the Guardian Angels? Or maybe he was an actor in costume. My companion on this trip, Professor Ralph Solecki of Columbia University seemed to read my confused mind, observing obliquely that “Brooklyn is a remarkably vibrant and always interesting community.” I thought oh good. Whatever this means, it’s ok.
Ralph Solecki and I had been to the waterfront in Red Hook to visit a site where a sewer line was going to be installed. In a complicated arrangement, although I worked for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in Albany, it was my job to evaluate and manage potential archaeological resource impacts for the EPA’s Section 106 compliance reviews in New York City. In doing so, I found that I had to make the case to my agency and the City’s Department of Environmental Protection that the approach to this should be appropriately contemporary and defensible. The EPA and various officials in other agencies were on-board with this, but not everyone else was, including some DEC and DEP engineers who were skeptical of the need to dig through the built-land along the waterfront. I don’t mean to speak in shorthand here. What I’m talking about is being on the inside convincing the agencies that were in consultation with the EPA (i.e., the outside) of the cases when digging (Phase 1B archaeological surveys) would be needed in addition to the previously stand-alone, (Phase 1A) research reports that commented on historic maps and documents. Ralph was the consultant hired to do the Phase 1A archaeological surveys for various sewer projects, and also had been allowed to walk open trenches during construction in case anything especially important was exposed. At Red Hook the Phase 1A research hinted that there could be Dutch tidal mill sites or other important archaeological data below the fill.
On a previous project, at Fulton Street in Brooklyn, Ralph was walking the open-cut sewer trench with a construction management supervisor he knew when they made a remarkable discovery. The way I heard the story, Solecki’s friend picked up a flattened, dirty piece of metal and handed it to him saying “What’s this Doc, is it worth anything?” Ralph looked at what he held in his hand, holding in a considerable surge of excitement and replied “No. It’s priceless.” They had found an extremely rare artifact of the Revolutionary War, a Hessian hat plate. This was an insignia from the hat of a Hessian mercenary fighting for the British and lost during or about the time of the Battle of Brooklyn. It was one of only three surviving Hessian hat plates from the American War for Independence (Solecki and Demeritt 1980). This discovery, of course, provides a cogent example of a reason to perform the field archaeology before digging the sewer trench.
Ralph was an effective ally in moving the EPA’s compliance program into a better position. He and I were in touch over the next year or so while I continued my work at the DEC, perhaps even a little longer, after I left for a position at the State Museum. When I met Ralph, he was a famous archaeologist primarily because of his discovery (with his wife Rose Solecki) of a group of Neanderthal skeletons at Shanidar Cave, Iraq. His interpretation of this to archaeology’s public audience (Solecki 1971) was informative, touching, even thrilling. At Shanidar, flower pollen recovered from what appeared to be grave sites, as well as the care that must have been afforded to a disabled individual interred in one of the graves, provided palpable senses of aesthetics, love, and ritual to Ralph’s story of these hominids so closely related to our own species (indeed, DNA research reveals that present-day people carry Neanderthal DNA unless their ancestry is only sub-Saharan African. So in a way Neanderthals are more than closely related to our species. Many of us are, in part, them). Ralph’s interpretation of Neanderthals was of a kinder, gentler sort than was current before his discovery. This soft view of Neanderthals has been challenged more recently, and excavations at Shanidar Cave have been renewed, despite the war with ISIS. Meanwhile, other research seems to broaden the perspective of Neanderthal humanity and underscore Ralph’s position. I tend to support the view of an essential Neanderthal humanity that Ralph’s interpretation required anthropologists to consider.
While Ralph was the archaeologist on the Brooklyn sewer projects his main research was on the cave site in Yabroud, Syria, which had produced evidence of an important Upper Paleolithic culture for a remarkable German archaeologist named Alfred Rust during the early 20th century (Rust was an amateur archaeologist who would ride his bicycle from Germany to Syria to excavate after he found this site; Bibby 1956). Ralph had connections he generously offered that were helpful to some young American archaeologists looking for fieldwork opportunities in Germany (not me, but people I knew). Despite his international projects, he had a long love for local archaeology because (as he explained to me) “I’m an old Brooklyn boy”.
Simply by coincidence, because I was visiting Gene Sterud on Staten Island, and before I actually met Ralph, I happened to be present when Ralph and others founded Professional Archaeologists of New York City (known by the acronym PANYC). PANYC advocates for wise cultural resource management policies and practices. The Hessian hat plate discovery was a recent experience at that point, but I have no doubt that Ralph had earlier experiences working to save the archaeological record from construction projects. One that easily comes to mind, and that is well documented, is the destruction of an Adena culture burial mound in Natrium, West Virginia in 1948 (Solecki 1953; Silverberg 1967 gives a short popular account of this excavation with emphasis on the cold, nasty weather). After a period in which the Natrium mound had been threatened intermittently with destruction by the expansion of a Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company chemical plant, which the company at least once had backed off from due to objections, Pittsburgh Plate Glass invited the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) at the Smithsonian Institution to salvage information from the mound because it was definitely going to be leveled. At the time Ralph worked for the BAE, and was the archaeologist sent to do this work with help from volunteers, company personnel, and a bulldozer. The excavation was conducted over a period of 20 days in December (including Christmas). The winter timing was provided by the company, accommodating their schedule. Ralph’s excavation recovered a great deal of valuable information about the Ohio drainage Adena culture, it’s mound construction and mortuary practices, and relations to other contemporary societies; but this success shouldn’t obscure the more general situation in which there are needs to avoid destroying such important sites as well as optimize the conditions and funding of archaeological investigations when destruction is inevitable. There were many experiences carried by various people into the room the day that PANYC formed; this was one of Ralph’s.
Later in his career, long after I visited Red Hook with him, Ralph made sustained efforts to publish the New York research conducted during his youth. One of these efforts is his article on a Late Woodland period pit containing 2 human burials with accompanying ceramics at College Point, Queens, excavated with his friend Stanley Wisniewski (Solecki 2006). Carlyle Smith included this discovery in The Archaeology of Coastal New York (Smith 1950). Ralph’s 2006 publication provided the critical contextual information regarding the excavation. Another example is the report on excavations at Fort Corchaug in the Town of Southold, Suffolk County which he co-authored with Lorraine Williams (Solecki and Williams 1998). Fort Corchaug was a Corchaug Indian stockade and wampum manufacturing site in the 1630s-1660s. Ralph used his 1936-1948 excavations as a basis for the thesis he wrote for his 1948 Columbia University Master’s degree. Lorraine Williams returned for further investigation in 1968. Their joint publication is a synopsis of the documentation they helped prepare to nominate the Fort Corchaug site as a National Historic Landmark: i.e., a site that has yielded “information of major scientific importance.”
I want to close this appreciation of Ralph Solecki by referring to a certain labor of love he completed in 2010 at the age of 93. This is the report titled The Archaeology of Maspeth, Long Island, New York and Vicinity which he co-authored with Stanley H. Wisniewski. When I say labor of love, I mean that Ralph continued his commitment to publishing his early archaeological work from the 1930s, and that after Stanley’s passing in 2008 Ralph saw the project through to the end for both of them. This 104-page book reports the investigations they made, not as professional archaeologists, but as children and teenagers in the 1930s. In general this is something children should not do. These two were mostly self-taught and aided by brilliance. Remarkably, they recorded what they were doing sufficient that their records proved useful when they wrote the book some 75 years later.
There was a remnant of the past yet to be discovered in this shore-fronted, industrial corner of Queens County at Furman’s Island along Newtown Creek, near a liquid carbonic acid factory. Ralph and Stanley lived about a half hour’s walk away. Here these two young men interested in archaeology made a considerable collection of prehistoric Indian artifacts, while also recording a 17th century fireplace site and the historic (mid-19th-early 20th century) Garvis pipe factory site. They mostly surface collected but did some digging at the fireplace site (which may have been part of a Dutch trading post), an oyster shell-filled pit, and an argillite concentration. Over the years while they were there, they witnessed the archaeological site disappear under a growing garbage dump.
The book contains maps that record where various features and artifact finds were made, including the pipe factory, the fireplace, the argillite concentration, the location where a Palmer (Early Archaic) point was found, and the oyster shell-filled pit. The authors’ mature hindsight brings a coherent perspective of the environmental setting and the nature of the excavations and collecting, while providing interpretation of the recovered data in a contemporary framework that clarifies coastal New York data, and especially with importance to the Early and Middle Archaic periods. This publication has been of great value to my research, and my work has enjoyed the expertise and accuracy with which Wisniewski and Solecki identified the projectile point types. In doing this they have reduced the confusion and found some of the expected evidence of early occupation that seems to be missing from certain reports others wrote in times when archaeological knowledge was more limited.
The last time I saw Ralph Solecki was at an archaeology conference in 2012, when I made a clumsy effort (in my opinion) to answer a question he had. These are the kinds of things we think of sometimes. Thank you, Ralph, and rest in peace.
References Cited
Bibby, Geoffrey 1956 The Testimony of the Spade. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Silverberg, Robert 1967 Men Against Time: Salvage Archaeology in the United States. The MacMillan Company, New York.
Smith, Carlyle S. 1950 The Archaeology of Coastal New York. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Volume 43, Number 2, New York.
Solecki, Ralph S. 1953 Exploration of an Adena Mound in Natrium, West Virginia. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 151, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
1971 Shanidar, The First Flower People. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
2006 A Late Woodland Double Indian Burial at College Point, New York. The Bulletin, Journal of the New York State Archaeological Association 122:70-79.
Solecki, Ralph S. and Dwight B. Demeritt 1980 An American Revolutionary War Relic from Brooklyn, New York. Journal of Field Archaeology 7(3):269-278.
Solecki, Ralph S. and Lorraine Williams 1998 Fort Corchaug Archaeological Site National Historic Landmark. The Bulletin, Journal of the New York State Archaeological Association 114:2-11.
Wisniewski, Stanley H. and Ralph S. Solecki 2010 The Archaeology of Maspeth, Long Island, New York and Vicinity. Researches and Transactions of the New York State Archaeological Association, Volume XVIII, Number 1, Rochester.
Shanidar: The First Flower People (by Ralph Solecki, published 1971) AISC January 2017 Newsletter Page 5 FROM OUR LIBRARY THIS MONTH http://www.angloiraqi.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Anglo-Iraqi-Studies-Centre-newsletter-January-2017.pdf This book was published by the American anthropologist Professor Ralph Solecki (1917-1988) of Columbia University, who excavated the caves of northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) between 1951 and 1960.
During this time, he found and excavated the Shanidar cave in northern Iraq, which is famed for the fossilized remains of early humans (neanderthals) found there.
Solecki found many fossilized remains of neanderthals, who were buried with their flowers, and this is why he named his book “The First Flower People”. These neanderthals had lived in the area around 40,000 years ago, and later researches suggested even earlier than this, long beforethe birth of civilisation in Mesopotamia and the world.
In 1957, Solecki and his team of anthropologists recovered the fossilised remains of 10 individuals from tens of thousands of years ago.
This was considered a grand find in the history of human evolution;Solecki’s findings indicated that these early humans may have practised early medicine and ritual burial.
Solecki is pictured here in northern Iraq, with a Kurdish assistant, during his excavations of the area. Also pictured is Shanidar Cave, the place of Solecki’s findings.
The last decade has done much to restore Neanderthal man to the ranks of humanity -- a benign good fellow who may have become extinct, may or may not have been a sub-race of Homo sapiens, and so on, but at least from the evidence seems to have possessed the ""full gamut of human feelings, from belligerence to love and compassion."" The extraordinary finds of Solecki at Shanidar Cave in Iraq enhance this image. A paleobotanist examining the soil residue in an area where Neanderthal skeletons were found (the first in this part of the world) revealed the startling fact that a variety of flowers were found also; from their distribution and position the implication was that they had been laid there deliberately as a funeral offering. Thus the First Flower People of Solecki's subtitle. The story of the dig at Shanidar and its rich repository of remains is told in this short excellent work, scholarly in its approach and modest in the presentation. The cave, a large shelter that has been occupied on and off over a period of 100,000 years, makes a fascinating raise en scene. For while Solecki and his colleagues were digging, the cave was occupied by families of Kurds who take shelter for a few months of the year along with their horses, goats, dogs, and chickens. The interactions of the two groups are not without their comic value but on the whole the Kurds remain mysterious -- Solecki sounds almost like a 19th century writer describing these wild mountain people living in isolated valleys, fierce, brave, etc. Indeed the fascinating counterpoint of modern Kurd and ancient Neanderthal runs through the book as a subtle background theme. In the end it would seem that the mystery of the modern Kurd is only mildly surpassed by the long dead inhabitants of that same terrain.
This now outdated and out-of-print book is a must-read for those not only interested in the Shanidar Neanderthals, but also in the process and even adventure of palaeoanthropological discovery. Interestingly, Ralph Solecki ended up in Iraq only because he couldn't get into Yemen, his originally intended location for surveying. This book brilliantly and engagingly details how he went about prospecting for early human sites, how he came to suspect the Shanidar cave's potential and his many discoveries therein. It also includes fascinating details such as the fact that families of local Iraqi Kurds were still living in the cave when they started excavating it, and their relationships and attitudes towards each other -- and towards the dynamite the archaeological team was using! Shanidar became a very significant Neanderthal site because of the so-called "flower burial": the Neanderthal known as Shanidar IV was discovered in a location rich in flower pollen; it was therefore claimed that this Neanderthal was buried with flowers, meaning that they were involved in ritual and emotion which had hitherto been seen as exclusively a Homo sapiens trait. As Solecki writes: "With the finding of flowers in association with Neanderthals, we are brought suddenly to the realization that the universality of mankind and the love of beauty go beyond the boundary of our own species." This is a complicated and now very controversial claim, with others arguing that the pollen was introduced by rodents, as there are many burrows in the sediment. (Keep an eye on the on-going analyses of Professor Graeme Barker's team.)
The Bioarchaeology of Care https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310771734_Tilley_L_2012_The_bioarchaeology_of_care Abstract: In archaeology, human skeletal remains are often dealt with separately from their
social context. However, by taking a biocultural approach to reconstruct both biological identity
and sociocultural context, the discipline of bioarchaeology can be used to diminish this divide
concerning the human body and can provide important perspectives on human behaviours. One
such behaviour is caregiving, and this paper explores the ability of bioarchaeology to identify
evidence of human caregiving from human remains. Tilley’s (2012) four-stage “bioarchaeology
of care” methodology is reviewed as a framework for future researchers to follow. The capacity
of bioarchaeology to interpret caregiving behaviour using theories of biocultural evolution and
identity of the body is also explored. Although there still exists some limitations, by modeling
Tilley’s (2012) methods, drawing upon social theory, and using individual case studies to make
inferences about populations, bioarchaeology can provide an interdisciplinary, unique, and
critical perspective on human caregiving.
Keywords: Bioarchaeology; Paleopathology; Caregiving; Disability; Biocultural Approach.
Tilley 2015 Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care - Overview and chapter abstracts.pdf
'Bioarchaeology of care' is a formal framework for analyzing cases of past caregiving in a contextualized and systematic manner. In bioarchaeology, health-related care is inferred from evidence in human remains that indicate survival with a disabling pathology when the individual would likely not have reached the actual age at death without care. Caregiving practices can potentially reveal a society's norms, values and beliefs. Additionally, caregiving can provide insights into societal knowledge, skills and experiences as well as political, economic, social and environmental variables. Despite its potential for providing a window into such aspects of past behavior, caregiving has been neglected as a topic for archaeological research. To alleviate this problem the Index of Care was created as an on-line instrument supporting application of a bioarchaeology of care methodology. Building a Bioarchaeology of Care consists of perspectives from three continents for developing theory and practice into a cohesive framework. Presenters will discuss the possibilities and pitfalls for Index of Care use, explore approaches for integrating care analysis in other areas of archaeology (e.g. mummification literature in context of caregiving), identify new directions for research, and propose strategies for communicating findings and stimulating debate.
ABSTRACT The history of Neandertals has been examined by a number of researchers who highlight how historical biases have impacted popular and scientific perceptions of Neandertals. Consequently, the history of Neandertals is relevant to current debates about their relationship to modern humans. However, histories of Neandertal research to date have focused on changes in beliefs regarding the Neandertals’ relationship to modern humans and correlated shifts in perceptions of their intelligence and anatomy. The development of ideas about Neandertal subsistence has generally not been discussed. This paper intends to correct this oversight. Through an historical overview of Neandertal subsistence research, this paper suggests that ideas about Neandertal subsistence have been affected by historical trends not only within archaeology, but also in anthropological and evolutionary theory.
Schematic cross section of the Solecki excavation, showing his major cultural layers, the key radiocarbon dates and the relative positions of the Neanderthals (reproduced with kind permission of Ralph Solecki)
The eastern extension of the Solecki trench in 1960, where most of the Neanderthal remains were found; this area is the main focus of the new excavations (reproduced with kind permission of Ralph Solecki).
General view of the excavation area, looking east, showing the locations mentioned in the text; scales: 2m and 0.5m (photograph by G. Barker).
A variety of burins and (bottom right) an endscraper from the sediments of Baradostian age (illustration by T. Reynolds).
The human right tibia and fibula in articulation with ankle bones near Solecki's Shanidar V Neanderthal skeletal material and probably part of the same group; scale: 8cm (photograph by G. Barker).
Abstract In 1856, a skeleton was found in a cave in the Neanderthal valley near Düsseldorf, Germany. After a long discussion, whether these bones would belong to a recent human being suffering from a disease, i.e. rachitis, it became accepted at the end of the nineteenth century, that, together with numerous similar remains from France and Belgium, these bones belong to a different species, Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals belong to a branch of the human evolutionary tree; they evolved from Homo heidelbergensis and lived during the ice ages in Western Europe, the middle East and West Siberia. Neanderthals got extinct about 40,000 years ago. The Neanderthal remains from the Neanderthal valley belong to an approximately 40 year old male, who suffered from numerous injuries and illnesses during lifetime such as a broken ulna and meningitis, which he apparently survived. This probably shows that he could only survive, because his group took care of him [1]. There a numerous examples from the Shanidar cave in northern Iraq, that have been excavated between 1950 and 1960 by Ralph Solecki, showing similar signs of diseases or injuries [2]. Shanidar I was a male of about 40-50 years. He was handicaped since childhood or early adulthood and died by a rock fall. His skull showed a deformation of the orbita due to crushing injury, most probably causing blindness of the left eye. His right arm was completely atrophied, either due to amputation or an extreme osteomyelitis years before his death. Two hearths were found in the vicinity of the skeleton, i.e., he probably watched the fire. An atypical abrasion of the teeth, indicating the use for heavy chewing (for example leather, like Inuit people did until recent times), shows that he made himself useful around the hearth. Shanidar III was wounded by a spear in his chest, which stuck in his ribs. He survived at least two weeks, because the gouge in his bone had started to heal [2,3]. The most interesting remain in terms of “medicine” is Shanidar IV, the “flower burial”. Earth probes around the skeleton revealed pollen of plants, such as horse tail (German: Schachtelhalm), senecio (Kreuzkraut), hollyhock (Malve),cornflower (Kornblume), grape hyazinth (Traubenhyazinthe), and yarrow (Schafgarbe), plants that are used as medical plants since ancient and medieval times until today [2]. There is increasing evidence that Neanderthals might have used these plants as medical plants by data from the El Sidrón cave in Spain (about 50000 years go) [4]. Analysis of the calculus of an adult Neanderthal revealed that this individual ate a range of cooked carbohydrates. The organic compounds azulene and coumarin were found, consistent with yarrow and camomile. The authors propose that “the Neanderthal occupants of El Sidrón, …..had a sophisticated knowledge of their natural surroundings, and were able to recognize both the nutritional and the medicinal value of certain plants. Although the extent of their botanical knowledge and their ability to self-medicate must of course remain open to speculation…” Today, there is strong archaeological evidence that Neanderthals were real human beings that took care of each other. Their skeletal remains clearly show that they were able to treat even severe injuries and illnesses and that they used medical plants. References [1] Spikins PA, Rutherford HE, Needham AP. From homininity to humanity: Compassion from the earliest archaics to modern humans. Time Mind 2010;3:303–26. doi:10.2752/175169610X12754030955977. [2] Solecki RS. Shanidar, the first flower people. 1st ed. Knopf; 1971. Smithsonian Collections Blog Highlighting the hidden treasures from over 2 million collections Tuesday, June 18, 2019 Discovering Culture in the Shanidar Cave Neanderthals Often, Neanderthals are thought of as a robust and brutish distant relative of modern humans. With their stout features and receding foreheads, the similarities between them and us seem scant at first, but in fact important parallels exist. Shanidar I excavation photo, 1957 [1].
Between 1957 and 1960, a total of nine Neanderthal individuals were recovered by archaeologist Ralph S. Solecki and local laborers in Shanidar Cave, Iraq. Fragments of lower leg bones of a tenth Neanderthal individual, an infant, have also been found, mixed in with the Shanidar animal fossil remains in the Smithsonian collections. These discoveries date to the Mousterian era at approximately 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. Neanderthals looked different from modern humans and through the 1950s had erroneously been thought to be less evolved, yet both species engaged in complex social behaviors, including care for sick or infirm individuals and symbolic beliefs. Culture is a phenomenon found in all human societies and behaviors similar to what we would consider cultural in modern humans were carried out by Neanderthals. For example, like humans, Neanderthals learned to create tools and ornaments made of stone and bone [2]. During the excavations of Shanidar Cave, hearths or firepits were unearthed, which may offer insight into the life habits of Neanderthals. Neanderthals had the capacity to start and maintain fires, and many of the hearths appear to have been strategically built against stones to give off reflective heat [2, 3]. The size of the hearths suggests that some were for communal use and others were reserved for smaller groups, possibly families [3]. Based on this evidence, some scientists believe that like modern humans Neanderthals formed groups and bonds among each other and very likely gathered around the hearths for meals and other activities that point to social practices [3].
Illustration of the hearths excavated at Shanidar Cave, circa 1957-1960 [1].
Mortuary practices, or behaviors associated with the treatment of the dead, are frequently an index of complex cultural practices. In archaeology, mortuary practices are one way to learn about cultural beliefs. In 1960, Ralph Solecki uncovered a male Neanderthal, aged approximately 40 years at time of death, during the fourth excavation season at Shanidar Cave. The individual, Shanidar IV, was found 7.5 meters below the modern cave floor in damp, brown, sandy soil. This soil was looser than what the excavators had previously encountered and indicated a burial. Shanidar IV was positioned on his left side with head placed towards the south. [4, 5, 9]. Through analysis of the Shanidar IV Neanderthal burial, specifically the soil samples collected during excavation, archaeologists like Ralph Solecki believed that the Shanidar IV skeleton may have been an intentional Neanderthal burial. Shanidar IV was found on its side in a bent position [1].
In 1975, a palynologist, or a scientist who studies pollen, Arlette Leroi-Gourhan published information regarding the soil samples taken from Shanidar Cave [6]. The samples showed tree pollen that could have blown into the cave by wind, but other samples contained pollen from at least eight species of small, brightly colored flowers that were relatives of hollyhock, yellow flowering groundsel, bachelor’s button, and grape hyacinth, all found today growing around the surrounding hillsides [6]. While this theory has been disputed by later scholars, Leroi-Gourhan suggested that the flower pollen was not brought into the cave by the wind or animals, but perhaps by the Neanderthals for a funerary ritual. The presence of Malvaceaes – a large, singular flower covered in spikes—seemed to suggest that the Neanderthals living at the cave at the time had wandered in search of the flower to place within the grave. This interpretation pointed toward higher cognitive ability within Neanderthals, according to Ralph Solecki [4, 5].
Malvaceae was one of the flower families found in the soil sample taken from around Shanidar IV [1].
Other anthropologists, who reasoned that Neanderthals were not using flowers in funerary practices, disagreed with Ralph Solecki’s interpretation of Shanidar IV. These interpretations stated that wind was able to carry the pollen through the large mouth of the cave [7]. Additionally, rodent species found in the cave are known to burrow and store plant materials, including flowers. These rodents might have been responsible for some of the deposition of the pollen found near Shanidar IV [8]. The pollen samples collected from the burial pit also included tiny fragments of wood and pollen grains of evergreens such as fir, suggesting to some researchers that tree boughs could have been brought to the burial site in addition to clusters of colorful flowers (6). The debate on whether the pollen samples found from around Shanidar IV are indicative of intentional funerary practices or whether the pollen came into the cave through other means continues today. If funerary, this has implications for how Neanderthals and even our own ancestors interacted with and interpreted the world around them.
Due to the extreme rarity of paleontological and archaeological evidence relating to human ancestors living tens of thousands of years ago, our comprehension about the human
lineage is often limited. Therefore, the wealth of archaeological evidence accompanying the Neanderthal remains at Shanidar Cave uncovered by Ralph and Rose Solecki has fundamentally shaped how we understand Neanderthals and our knowledge about the past. Two important goals of archaeologists like the Soleckis are to attempt to give those who lived in the past a voice and for others to have access to this information. These excavations and the Soleckis’ work have inspired new excavations at Shanidar Cave, which will broaden our understanding of how people occupying this cave adapted to their environment [10, 11]. Moreover, the Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project is processing the professional papers and cataloging the artifact collections of the Soleckis, including material from the Shanidar Cave excavations, in order to make them more accessible to researchers as well as the public.
Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki papers - contents · SOVA
To learn more about the Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project, check out previous Solecki Project Smithsonian Collections Blog posts. Also, explore the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program’s Snapshot in Time about Shanidar Cave. The Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project was made possible by two grants from the Smithsonian Institution’s Collections Care and Preservation Fund. Viridiana Garcia and Kayla Kubehl, Interns, Spring 2019 Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History Sources [1] The Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. [2] Matt Cartmill, Kaye Brown, and Fred H. Smith, The Human Lineage. (Hoboken, N.J: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). [3] Ralph S. Solecki. “Living Floors in the Middle Palaeolithic Deposits at Shanidar Cave, Northern Iraq.” Unpublished, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. [4] Ralph S. Solecki, 1975. “Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal burial in Northern Iraq.” Science 190 (4217), pp. 880-881. [5] Ralph S. Solecki, Shanidar: The First Flower People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971). [6] Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, 1975. “The flowers found with Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal burial in Iraq.” Science 190 (4214), pp. 562-564. [7] Robert H. Gargett et al., 1989. “Grave shortcomings: The evidence for Neanderthal burial.” Current Anthropology 30 (2), 157-190. [8] Jeffrey D. Sommer, 1999. “The Shanidar IV ‘Flower Burial’: A re-evaluation of Neanderthal burial ritual.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9 (1), pp. 127-129. [9] Ralph S. Solecki, Shanidar, The First Flower People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971). [10] Tim Reynolds, William Boismier, Lucy Farr, Chris Hunt, Dlshad Abdulmutalb and Graeme Barker, 2015. “New investigations at Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan.” Antiquity: A Review of World Archaeology vol. 89, no. 348 [11] Elizabeth Culotta, 2019. “New remains discovered at site of famous Neanderthal ‘flower burial’” Science, doi:10.1126/science.aaw7586
Excavations led by Ralph Solecki from 1951 to 1960 at Shanidar Cave in the Zagros ... radiocarbon date from charcoal associated with Shanidar 1 (Solecki, 1971). ... The first is whether the material can be confidently identified as Neanderthal. ... distinguishing between published data on Neanderthals, Late Pleistocene H.
2009. Report on a visit to Shanidar and other sites (with co-author Julie R. Anderson) Julian E Reade JR Anderson Prehistoric Archaeology, Kurdish Studies, Archaeological Heritage Management Report on prospects for archaeological work at Shanidar and elsewhere in Iraqi Kurdistan, 2009.
Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium) https://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/486 Amanda G. Henrya,b,1, Alison S. Brooksa , and Dolores R. Pipernob,c,1a Department of Anthropology, Center for Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology, Washington, DC 20052; b Archaeobiology Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC 20013-7012; and c Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 2072 Balboa, Panama Contributed by Dolores R. Piperno, November 12, 2010 (sent for review July 7, 2010) Health-related care for the
Neanderthal Shanidar 1 http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n2558/pdf/article07.pdf LAURA KENT Abstract The bioarchaeology of care methodology is used to identify health-related
care for prehistoric hominids using the skeletal indications of survival with
a disability or debilitating disease that would have resulted in death if care was
not given. This model involves four stages and was applied to the Neanderthal
Shanidar 1 in order to evaluate the type of care possibly received by the
individual and what this caregiving behaviour suggests about Neanderthal
culture and behaviour. The skeletal remains of Shanidar 1 represents an adult
male of advanced age who suffered from a number of debilitating pathologies
that would have affected his ability to survive and contribute to his social
group. Shanidar 1 required health-related care in the form of direct support
and accommodation of a different role within the social group in order to
survive to his age at death. The survival of Shanidar 1 to old age implies
Neanderthals were capable of changing their behaviour in order to care for
and accommodate injured members of their social group. This evidence of
health-related care for Shanidar 1 suggests Neanderthals had a greater level
of behavioural flexibility and social complexity than previously believed.
First ‘flower people’: Neanderthal grave is sign of elaborate funerals Rhys Blakely, Science Correspondent Tuesday February 18 2020, 12.00pm GMT, The Times The discovery of Shanidar Z in Iraqi Kurdistan was the first of its kind in decades GRAEME BARKER/UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE/PA
The first Neanderthal skeleton to be unearthed in decades promises to settle a debate over whether these ancient cousins of modern humans held sophisticated funeral rituals that made them the first “flower people”.
The remains, thought to be about 70,000 years old, were discovered in Shanidar Cave, in the foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Crucially, the skeleton — called Shanidar Z — appears to have been deliberately buried in a grave-like hollow that also contains plant matter such as pollen.
Cambridge University and Liverpool John Moores University are carrying out tests to discover if the find supports a long-contested theory that Neanderthals held elaborate rites, including burying their dead with flowers.
The Shanidar site was first excavated in the 1950s and 1960s, when the late American
Were the Neandertals Our Ancestors? On an August day in 1856, in the Neandertal Valley in northwestern Germany, a workman in a lime- stone quarry uncovered the bones of what he thought was a cave bear. He put them aside to show to Johann Fuhlrott, the local schoolteacher and an enthusiastic natural historian. Fuhlrott immediately realized this was something much more significant than the bones of a bear. The head was about the size of a man’s, but it was shaped differently, with a low forehead, bony ridges above the eyes, a large projecting nose, large front teeth, and a bulge protruding from the back. The body, to judge from the bones that were recovered, must also have resembled a man’s, though he would have been shorter and stockier—and far more powerful—than any normal man. Making the bones even more significant, Fuhlrott realized, was that they’d been found amid geological deposits of great antiquity. The schoolteacher contacted Hermann Schaaflhausen, a pro- fessor of anatomy at the nearby University of Bonn. He, too, recognized that the bones were extraordinary: “a natural con- formation hitherto not known to exist,” as he later described them. Indeed, what the workman had uncovered, Schaafflhausen believed, was a new—or rather a very, very old—type of human
Title: Unsolved Mysteries of History: An Eye-Opening Investigation into the Most Baffling Events of All Time Author: Paul Aron ISBN: 0-471-35190-3
The study of Neandertal (or Neanderthal either is correct) burials has caused much debate in the academic world. The topics under discussion range from whether Neandertals deliberately interred their dead to their possible use of grave offerings and ritual practices, which may or may not have included post-mortem defleshing or cannibalism. An excavation of Neandertal burials in Shanidar Cave, Iraq by Ralph Solecki in 1960 caused controversy when flower pollen was discovered in a burial site. This led Solecki to conclude the occupant, called Shanidar IV, was deliberately interred on a bed of flowers. Although today Solecki’s interpretation has been disregarded, it is a good example of the controversies surrounding the cognitive abilities of Neandertals.
Solecki excavated nine Neandertals at Shanidar Cave between 1951 and 1960. Rock falls in the cave were the probable cause of death for several of the individuals, but others appeared to have been buried deliberately. Evidence of animal remains, hearths and ashes indicated these individuals had occupied the cave before their accidental death or burial at the site. Those that had been killed by the rock falls had only partial skeletal remains while the deliberately buried remains were mostly complete. Seven adults and two infants were unearthed and four of the skeletons had been placed on top of one another. This could indicate one multiple burial or a series of single burials.
Shanidar Skull
These four skeletons, called Shanidar IV, VI, VII, and VIII are the best evidence for deliberate burials at the site. Shanidar VIII was an infant, Shanidar VI and VII were adult females, and Shanidar IV was an adult male. The infant was buried first, followed by the two females placed adjacent to each other, and then finally the adult male. There was also evidence of possible funerary caching at the site in the case of the remains of Shanidar III. Funerary caching is the practice of placing remains in a natural feature, such as a fissure or the back of a cave, without making any modifications to the location.
The excavations at Shanidar grew controversial over the analysis of a routine soil sample. Solecki took six soil samples from the area around Shanidar IV and Shanidar VI in addition to areas where no remains had been found. The analysis was performed by paleobotanist Arlette Leroi-Gourhan several years later. She discovered not only pollen from trees and grasses, but pollen from at least seven species of wild flowers as well. While there were sparse traces of pollen from all parts of the cave, the pollen from the burial area was concentrated in large clusters and was resting in the part of the stamen that contains the pollen. Leroi-Gourhan concluded neither wind, birds, or animals could have deposited the floral pollen in the cave.
The discovery that the remains of a Neandertal had been placed on a bed of flowers was unlike anything archaeologists had ever found in an early burial site. Solecki said of the unprecedented find that “the simplest explanation appears to be that no one had ever thought of looking for pollens in graves.” This led Solecki to conclude that the Shanidar Neandertals were the first “Flower People” who were capable of human feelings by appreciating the beauty of placing flowers on a grave.
Shanidar Cave Entrance
Today most researchers have disregarded Solecki’s interpretation of this evidence. Ironically, his own description of the site led to this reversal of thought. Solecki describes numerous rodent holes close to the skeletal remains and his assumption was the “animals must have been looking for the flesh of the dead.” He even mentions that the holes were used to determine the possible location of human remains. Solecki would “plot the number and angle of the rodent holes, because they seemed to be most numerous around human bones, and seemed to zero in on them from different directions.”
The gerbil-like rodent which may have been responsible for these holes, called Meriones persicus, is native to the area around Shanidar. Research on the burrows of a similar species called, Meriones crassus, indicates the rodents may have indeed been responsible for the flower pollen evidence which was found in the cave. Evidence that the Meriones crassus had kept flower heads in its burrows was found, in addition to seeds, leaves, and other plant material.Furthermore, the amount of flower heads that were found could easily account for amount of pollen at the Shanidar burial site. If that is the case, Solecki and Arlette Leroi-Gourhan were mistaken in their analysis that animals could not have been responsible for the pollen in the cave. Coupled with the fact that the Meriones persicus was likely responsible for the flower pollen in the burial, no similar pollen evidence has ever been found at any other location. Regardless of his interpretation of the pollen in the burial site, Solecki’s work at Shanidar is still an important Neandertal discovery due to the number and quality of the remains discovered and the academic controversy which has surrounded it.
Meriones Persicus: Was the pollen from this little guy?
Enough evidence has been found at thirty Neandertal excavated sites to indicate they were practicing a number of deliberate mortuary activities.One of those activities is funerary caching, which as mentioned before, involves the disposal of remains in a pre-existing natural location. This practice may have started as a way to keep decaying bodies away from the areas inhabited by the living. Placing remains in naturally protected areas such as caves and fissures could have been done to protect the remains from predators. Moving the remains away from living areas would also have guaranteed predators would not be drawn by the scent of decaying flesh. Funerary caching may have taken place at the excavated sites in Caverna (Grotta) delle Fate, Italy, La Quina, Charente, El Sidrón Cave, Spain, and Krapina, Croatia where numerous skeletal remains were found. Even though the practice of funerary caching is not considered a true burial, its use implies that Neandertals understood the idea that the dead needed to be disposed of in an appropriate place.
There is some evidence that Neandertals practiced cannibalism, also called post-mortem defleshing. At the aforementioned El Sidrón Cave in northern Spain, the remains of twelve bodies have been excavated which may have been murdered then cannibalized by other Neandertals. The remains consisted of three adult males, three adult females, three male adolescents, two children, and one infant. Cannibalism was suspected in this case because the bones had been cut open with stone tools to retrieve the marrow and some skulls had been smashed to remove the brain. The remains also show evidence of skinning and intentional disarticulation, meaning the separation of two bones at the joint. While the evidence is strong for cannibalism at this site, it is important to note that some remains still had the skulls intact. This indicates there may have been another purpose for the post mortem processing other than just nutritional cannibalism.
El Sidron Cave Archaeological Dig
Additional evidence of possible cannibalism has been found at the Krapina, Croatia site as well. Similar to the remains at El Sidrón Cave, some of the skulls were smashed and bones were intentionally broken to remove the marrow. The bones of these remains were also burned. The remains of twenty-three individuals were discovered at Krapina consisting of fourteen adults, four adolescents, and five infants. Of those remains, only one cranium had cut marks which exhibited evidence of scalping. The Krapina site differed from Shanidar and El Sidrón because it was a natural rock shelter which may have been actually been inhabited. The discovery of Middle Paleolithic tools as well as animal remains offered evidence for habitation.
The subject of Neandertal cannibalism has caused much discussion in academia regarding the purpose of this practice. There seems to be little doubt that some remains were subjected to some kind of soft tissue processing after death. The primary purpose of processing, or defleshing, of the remains may have been for other Neandertals to consume, but it also could have been some type of funerary ritual which developed out of concern for the body. If indeed the purpose of the defleshing was cannibalism, the question remains whether the individuals were intentionally murdered for consumption as suggested by the evidence at El Sidrón Cave. Cannibalistic societies consider it a cult practice in which the brain and bone marrow are consumed to absorb the qualities of another, or to conquer the spirit of an enemy. It seems unlikely that cannibalism would have been considered a normal method of food provision, so the practice of defleshing could have served a spiritual or ritual aspect, in addition to offering a form of sustenance.
The evidence for deliberate burial is strong in several European and Near Eastern sites. Even though the evidence at these sites prove some Neandertals buried their dead, it does not prove that the practice was performed for each death or that it was even performed by all Neandertal groups.Generally, the fact that so many sites with remains have been found intact is strong evidence in itself that the remains were deliberately buried. Without deliberate burial the remains would probably not have survived decay or destruction by predators. Even if Neandertals did not experience our burial process of grieving and honoring the dead, the burial evidence found in such a widespread area definitely shows some motive for deliberate inhumation.
Red ochre has been found in Neandertal graves at La Ferrassie and La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France as well as Spy Cave in Belgium. The meaning or significance of the red ochre is not known but its ritual use could be further evidence of deliberate burial.Red ochre is a natural pigment derived from hematite, and has been found in later Upper Paleolithic burial sites and cave paintings. Intentional inhumations can also be identified by the placement of the remains. Bodies were placed in their graves lying on one side in a flexed position, similar to the fetal position. Those bodies which were deliberately buried were also fully articulated, meaning all the joints were intact.
The graves at several sites, including the aforementioned La Chapelle-aux-Saints, La Ferrassie, and Shanidar IV, VI, VII, and VIII, are generally accepted as deliberate burials. A nearly complete adult skeleton was discovered in a rectangular pit at the entrance to the cave at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. The fact that the pit was rectangular shaped with straight walls and a flat bottom is a strong indication that the pit had been intentionally dug for the grave, since a naturally formed pit would not have those types of features. At La Ferrassie the nearly complete articulated skeletal remains of an adult male and an adult female, plus the remains of three children and one fetus were discovered buried together in a clear cut grave. One of the children, approximately three years old, also had near complete skeletal remains, which is rare because children’s bones are quite delicate and are not usually found intact.
As discussed before, the remains of Shanidar IV, VI, VII, and VIII are the best examples of deliberate burials at Shanidar Cave. The sequential order of the burials, where the child was buried first, followed by the two adult females, and then finally the adult male suggested the remains were interred over a short amount of time. These skeletal remains for all these individuals were articulated as well. Although articulation is an important indicator of intentional burial, by itself it does not offer enough proof. Articulated remains in conjunction with a burial structure or pit, such as those found in La Chapelle-aux-Saints and La Ferrassie, or the presence of grave goods offer the best indicators of intentional burial. Grave goods can consist of stone tools, animal bones, and unique rocks.
Neandertal Skull from La Chapelle aux Saints
The interpretation of grave goods can be difficult because it is impossible to know if the objects were intentionally or accidentally added during the internment. It is entirely possible that tools and animal bones may have been on the cave floor and then fell into the graves when they were filled in. Although strong evidence has been found to substantiate Middle Paleolithic grave goods of Home sapiens at Djebel Qafzeh and Skhul Caves in Israel, no indisputable Neandertal grave goods have been found at this time. One of the best cases for Neandertal grave goods was found at Regourdou Cave in France where the remains of an adult was discovered lying on flat bed of stones and covered with a pile of stones, called a cairn. The cairn was topped with a combination of sand and ash, including bear and deer bones as well as flint tools.This site may represent the only “actual constructed tomb for the Middle Paleolithic” due to the placement of layers atop the body.
Based on the research included here it seems highly likely that at least some Neandertal groups intentionally interred their dead. With evidence for deliberate burials discovered in Europe and the Near East the practice appears to have been widespread, although it may not have always been performed. The compelling early evidence at Shanidar of internments on beds of flowers may have been replaced with the mundane explanation of the Meriones persicus’ storage of flower heads, but the idea that Neandertals may have had some funerary rituals is still very intriguing. The controversy over defleshing and cannibalism will likely continue as more Neandertal grave sites are discovered. The evidence discussed here indicates Neandertals may have practiced both defleshing as some type of funerary ritual as well as cannibalism for spiritual or nutritional purposes. Discoveries of the use of red ochre and possible grave goods only add to the evidence for deliberate burials. Hopefully future excavations will uncover indisputable evidence of true Neandertal burials and offer new insights into the world of one of humankind’s closest relatives.
WORKS CITED
Gibbons, Ann. “Grisly Scene Gives Clues to Neandertal Family Structure.”Science Now. Published December 20, 2010. Accessed July 6, 2013. http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/12/grisly-scene-gives-clues-to-nean.html?rss=1. Jordan, Paul. Neandertal. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1999. Mellars, Paul. The Neanderthal Legacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pettit, Paul. The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial. New York: Routledge, 2011. Riel-Salvatore, Julien and Geoffrey A. Clark. “Grave Markers: Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic Burials and the Use of Chronotypology in Comtemporary Paleolithic Research.” Current Anthropology, Vol. 42, No. 4,August/October 2001. doi:10.1086/321801. Accessed July 13, 2013, 449-479. Roebroeks, Will, Mark J. Sier, Trine Kellberg Nielsen, Dimitri De Loecker, Josep Maria Parés, Charles E. S. Arps, and Herman J. Mücher. “Use of Red Ochre by Early Neandertals.”PNAS Vol. 109 No. Published online before print January 23, 2012. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1112261109. Accessed July 13, 2013. 1889-1894. Schrenk, Friedemann, and Stephanie Miller. The Neanderthals. Translated by Phyllis G. Jestice. New York: Routledge, 2005. Solecki, Ralph. Shanidar: The First Flower People. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. Sommer, Jeffrey D. “The Shanidar IV ‘Flower Burial’: a Reevaluation of Neanderthal Burial Ritual.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 01. April 1999, 127-129. Accessed July 6, 2013. doi: 10.1017/S0959774300015249. Trinkaus, Erik. The Shanidar Neandertals. New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1983.
The Paleolithic or ‘Old Stone Age’ begins with the first stone tools some 2.5million years ago in Africa (Gowlett 1992, p. 350),and it ends with the Neolithic or ‘New Stone Age,’ essentially at the beginnings of agriculture. The Paleolithic is conventionally divided into Lower, Middle, Upper, and Terminal or Epi-Paleolithic periods. The Paleolithic is known almost exclusively from lithic artifacts—stone tools, classified in conventional ways into types that are diagnostic of the various periods. There is virtually no information about the perishable tools and devices made of wood, fiber, or skins that may have been in use. Layers in archeological sites typically contain quantities of lithics, bones of animals that were hunted and consumed, and the ash from domestic fires. Paleolithic sites in Iran are known primarily from caves and rock shelters in the central Zagros mountains along with a few sites on the Caspian Sea coast and scattered sites on the desert plateau.
Lower Paleolithic. Found in Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and Europe, the Lower Paleolithic is known for two distinctive tool traditions. The first has hand axes and choppers, along with relatively crude flakes struck from flint or quartzite cores. Such tools are thought to have been made by Homo erectus, an archaic form of human that preceded the Neanderthals. The hallmark tool of the Lower Paleolithic, the hand axe, is virtually unknown east of the Euphrates, whereas west of that river it is commonly found. Iran may belong to a second Lower Paleolithic tradition that extends across eastern Asia and is known for its choppers, chopping tools, and crude flakes (Movius, 1969).
Barda Balka, a site in the Chemchemal (Čamčamāl) valley of the western Zagros, in present-day Iraq, had a mix of choppers, flint flakes and a few small hand axes. Based on geology, the site is thought to date to the end of the last interglacial (older than 100,000 years ago), a relatively warm period when there were elephants and rhinos, as well as sheep, goats, and onagers, on the landscape (Braidwood and Howe, 1960; Wright and Howe, 1951). A few hand axes have turned up on the surface in Iran (Braidwood, 1960), but none has come from a secure archeological context, and it is possible that they may be Middle Paleolithic in date, as suggested by the occasional presence of hand axes in Middle Paleolithic tool assemblages. Other sites with possible Lower Paleolithic material, but not hand axes, have been reported from the Central Zagros (Biglari et al., 2000), Azerbaijan (Sadek-Kooros, 1974, 1976), Fārs (Rosenberg, 1988, p. 452), Khorasan (Ariai and Thibault, 1975-77), and Baluchistan (Hume, 1976). Sites as old as 800,000 years have been discovered in Central Asia, suggesting that occurrences of similar age may be found in Iran (Davis and Ranov, 1999).
Middle Paleolithic-Mousterian. Middle Paleolithic sites are known from the Taurus mountains (Minzoni-Deroche, 1993), the Zagros mountains (see below), Uzbekistan (Movius, 1953), several sites in Central Asia, one of which is dated to 200,000 years ago (Davis and Ranov, 1999: p.191), and Afghanistan (Dupree and Davis, 1972). Despite the limited extent of investigations in Iran, there are many Middle Paleolithic sites, although few have been excavated and published in full. In the Levant, the Middle Paleolithic extends back more than 200,000 years and terminates 40,000 years ago. The true age of the Mousterian in the Zagros is not known, although carbon from Kunji Cave gave a radiocarbon date of greater than 40,000 years (Hole and Flannery, 1967a). While we cannot be certain when the Middle Paleolithic began in Iran, we know that it ended before 30,000 years ago with the appearance of the Baradostian Upper Paleolithic. Much has been made of the distinctive technical characteristics of the stone tools of the Zagros Mousterian (Baumler and Speth, 1993; Dibble and Holdaway, 1993; Skinner, 1965; Smith, 1986), as compared with those of the Levant or Europe. “The main distinctions include the much lower frequencies of Levallois [a technique of flaking the flint (Dibble and Bar-Yosef, 1995)] in the Zagros and an almost total emphasis on double [two-edged] and convergent [two-sided] scraper forms there instead of the transverse [broad-bladed] and déjeté [obliquely angled] forms” (which are found in the Levant; Dibble and Holdaway, 1993, p. 91).
Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan is the most important site in the region (Solecki, 1963) owing to the remains of numerous Neanderthals, some of whom were crushed by rockfalls in this earthquake-prone region. One apparent burial, in sediments containing flower pollen, is the subject of a book (Leroi-Gourhan, 1975; Solecki, 1960 and 1971; Stewart, 1963). The Middle Paleolithic of Shanidar closely resembles that found at Hazer Merd cave near Solaymāniya (Garrod, 1930) and several sites in Iran. No Neanderthal skeletal remains have yet been found in any of the Iranian caves. The best-known sites are Warwasi (Dibble and Holdaway, 1993) and Bisotun (Coon, 1951; Dibble, 1984), near Kermānšāh, and Kunji Cave and Gar Arjeneh (Ḡār-e Arjena) near Ḵorramābād (Baumler and Speth, 1993; Hole and Flannery, 1967a). The cave of Ghar-i Khar (Ḡār-e Ḵar) near Bisotun holds promise of being as important as Shanidar, but it has not yet been fully excavated (Smith 1986, p. 18). Apart from these sites, numerous other similar occurrences are known, but few have seen even small test excavations, and these have simply added similar material (Biglari, 2001; Biglari and Heydari, 2001; Roustaei et al., 2002).
All of the excavated sites have yielded lithics, animal bones, and fireplace ash, but no other types of artifacts, such as might have been made of bone or wood. The Middle Paleolithic occurred during periods of profound climate change, yet there are no indications that habits changed, implying that people occupied these mountain regions only during the warmer periods. The sites inform more on the presence of people and their hunting habits than on other particulars of their life style.
Upper Paleolithic-Baradostian. There was a technological transformation or evolution between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. Rather than a lithic industry based on flakes, now there is an increasing emphasis on blades (elongate and regularly shaped flakes) and in time a gradual reduction in their size (Hole and Flannery, 1967a; Olszewski, 1993a). More important than the shape of the flakes is that now they are used to make a new array of specialized tools, including scrapers, gravers, and narrow points that were probably hafted on spears or arrows. Significant innovations also include the use of bone for awls, and flat stones for grinding ochre pigments and plant foods. Unlike Europe, here there is no evidence at this time for “art,” although the use of pigments implies deliberate coloring of bodies or artifacts.
The Baradostian is the Zagros variety of the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic. First described by Ralph Solecki (Solecki, 1958), it has subsequently been found in Iran in Warwasi (Olszewski, 1993a), Ghar-i Khar (Smith 1986, p. 27), Gar Arjeneh (Hole and Flannery, 1967a), and Yafteh (Yafta) Cave. Surveys in the Holaylān valley (Smith, 1986, no. 1452; p. 27), Lorestan (Roustaei et al., 2002), and Khuzestan (Wright, 1979) indicate that there are many more small caves and shelters in the central Zagros. Beyond the Zagros there are surface indications of Upper Paleolithic around the now dry playa Lake Tašk in Fārs province (Krinsley, 1970, no. 8314; p. 224). Rosenberg reports finding 24 sites in Marv Dašt, one of which, Eškāft-e Gāvi, has Mousterian as well as early and late Baradostian indications (Rosenberg, 1988: p. 455).Another reported surface occurrence of Upper Paleolithic is at Šekaft-e Ḡad-e Barm-e Šur on Lake Maharlu, near Shiraz (Piperno, 1974). The numerous occurrences of Upper Paleolithic lithics on the plateau as well as in the Zagros implies that the distribution of people was wider and their adaptation more varied than in the Middle Paleolithic.
The excavated sites give few clues to significant differences in adaptation from the Middle Paleolithic, perhaps because the sites are functionally similar— hunting camps rather than residential. On the other hand, the same animals were being hunted, albeit with new and evolving tool types that give the Upper Paleolithic the appearance of being more diverse and specialized.
The latest part of the Upper Paleolithic occurred during the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM), when the mountains were permanently covered with snow, so that one should expect there to be gaps or discontinuities in settlement. Weather during the late Pleistocene was always colder than today, but there were periods when it cycled between moderate and frigid. Neanderthals as well as the Upper Paleolithic people had to adapt to these changes, either through developing efficient shelters or by migrating to warmer places. If they migrated, then the sites we find in Iran must often have been relatively short-term camps of hunters who made only brief forays into the mountains during the warm periods.
One of the questions driving research is to find sites that hold evidence of a transition from Middle to Upper Paleolithic, a question stimulated by an interest in the origins of modern Homo sapiens and the disappearance of Neanderthals. Was there a biological evolution from Neanderthal to modern people, or was there a replacement of Neanderthals? So far, the data in archeological sites have not been adequate to answer this question (Bar-Yosef, 1998; Smith, 1986, p. 25). The actual dates for the duration of the Baradostian are not known, despite radiocarbon determinations from both Yafteh and Shanidar caves. The first series of dates for the early Baradostian from Yafteh Cave, run on carbon, gave an estimate of 32-38,000 years ago (Hole and Flannery, 1967b), but recent analyses on charred bone, using the more accurate AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) method, determined an age of 30-32,000 years, while bone collagen yielded dates of only 22-23,000 years ago. One might argue for either set of dates as being correct. The older dates correspond well with dates for comparable lithics in the Levant and Europe, and leave less room for a temporal gap between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, as suggested for Shanidar (Solecki, 1963, p. 188). On the other hand, Warwasi, Ghar-i Khar, and Gar Arjeneh lack any stratigraphic break between Middle and Upper Paleolithic, as one would expect if some 10-20,000 years separated them. Adjusting the Middle Paleolithic forward in time does not seem possible in view of radiocarbon dates of greater than 40,000 years from Kunji Cave.
If the early Baradostian is as late as 22,000, it is in the midst of the LGM, when it seems unlikely that the Zagros supported much human activity (van Zeist and Bottema, 1977). An argument for an even later date for the end of the Baradostian is that it appears to develop into the Zarzian, a final Paleolithic industry. Again, there is no apparent stratigraphic break between the Baradostian and Zarzian at the three sites where it has been excavated and reported.
Terminal Paleolithic-Zarzian. The terminal Paleolithic in western Iran is known as the Zarzian, after the cave of Zarzi in Iraqi Kurdistan (Garrod, 1930). The hallmark of the Zarzian is small blades (microlithics), many of which in the latest Zarzian are chipped into geometric forms such as triangles and trapezoids (Hole and Flannery, 1967b; Wahida, 1981). The reduction in size of tools that started in the early Baradostian reached its climax with the Zarzian, and this change required the development of the single platform core from which the little blades were struck (Hildebrand, 1996).
Radiocarbon dates from Shanidar and Palegawra, also in Iraqi Kurdistan, indicate a Zarzian presence by 17,000 years ago, and it is generally assumed that it lasted until the advent of the Neolithic about 10,000 years ago. This date range would allow for settlement of the Zagros in the millennia after the LGM when conditions improved sufficiently to allow the spread of vegetation back into the higher elevations. This date does, however, imply a considerable gap with the Baradostian, even if we use the latest dates for that industry. Shanidar Cave was abandoned during the LGM, as were sites inIranian Paleolithic northern Afghanistan and Central Asia, and a similar hiatus may have occurred in Iran (Davis and Ranov, 1999; Smith, 1986, p. 28), although stratification in the sites does not show it (Olszewski, 1993b; Hole, 1967, no. 7737).
With climatic amelioration throughout the world following the LGM, there were opportunities for the movement of people out of warmer zones into the mountains, making use of camps outside caves and shelters. The primary Zarzian sites are Ghar-i Khar, Gar Arjeneh, and Pa Sangar, where small bands of hunters observed game on the plain below and brought the meat back to eat. A number of other caves are known in the Holaylān valley, along with open-air sites (Mortensen, 1974a, b, 1975). Situated at a lower elevation, Holaylān may have been a cool or winter season camping area.
Based on scant information from the excavated sites of Pa Sangar, Palegawra, Zarzi, and Shanidar, there was little change in hunting practices from previous periods in that goats and onager were still the main quarry. However, there was an increased emphasis on small game, including partridge and duck, as well as freshwater crabs, clams, turtles, and, for the first time, fish. At both Zarzi and Shanidar excavators found quantities of land snails among the Zarzian debris. Flannery characterized this diversity as the broad spectrum revolution, in which the range of species hunted was greatly expanded from previous periods (Flannery, 1969). Mary Stiner attributes the diversity, in part, to dietary stress, which forced people to collect smaller animals, because the larger ones were no longer available either through over-hunting or environmental changes (Stiner, 1993). In the absence of human skeletons from this period, we cannot assess how humans may have been affected. At Palegawra we have the first indication of domesticated dog (Turnbull 1974). It would be interesting to know whether people were eating much plant food during the Zarzian, presaging an agricultural diet, as occurred in the Levant.
There are few Neolithic artifacts from these sites apart from bone awls. At Pa Sangar, two large saltwater scallop shells lay side by side, and bits of red ochre were also recovered (Hole, 1987).
Beyond the Zagros, lithics attributed to the Epipaleolithic, but not specifically Zarzian, have been reported from a number of places in southern Iran. Lithics at rockshelters on the shore of Lake Maharlu near Shiraz were reported by Henry Field (Field, 1939, p. 445). In the Marv Dasht valley, Rosenberg found a handful of sites with Iranian Paleolithic geometric microliths that he attributes to the Zarzian or a variant of it (Rosenberg, 1988, p. 458). Surveys on the Izeh (Iḏa), Dasht-i Gol (Dašt-e Gol), and Iveh (Iva) plains have also revealed a number of sites with microlithic blades but apparently not geometrics, leaving open whether these are early Neolithic or Zarzian (Smith, 1986, p. 31; Wright, 1979).
Two sites along the southern Caspian coast have stone tools resembling those of the Terminal Paleolithic. The Caspian region, along the Māzandarān plain, was probably attractive to people because of its mild climate and rich resources, but there is no archeological evidence of their presence before the Terminal Paleolithic. Belt (Ḡār-e Kamarband; Coon, 1951, 1952, 1957), and Ali Tappeh (ʿAli Tappa) I (McBurney, 1968) have lithics similar to the Zarzian. During the Pleistocene, the Caspian Sea was at a higher level than today, and Ali Tappeh was just above its shoreline. As the sea receded, Belt and Hotu became accessible and were occupied. People living along the coast took advantage of the resources of the sea, the coastal marshes, and the mountain slopes. The fauna show an interesting change. Early there is a predominance of gazelle and seal, with some ox and deer, but later gazelle predominate, with some goat or sheep (McBurney, 1968). One may speculate that an environmental change led to the shift in diet. These sites give hints of the potential of the region for further exploration and excavation using modern methods.
The Terminal Paleolithic took place during a period of rising temperatures until about 13,000 BCE, when the region suffered a rapid reversal to near glacial conditions (the Younger Dryas period)—a shock that must have decimated many populations. Perhaps because people abandoned the Zagros during this time, there is no site that gives convincing evidence of continuity with the proto-Neolithic cultures that follow. In the eastern Mediterranean, agriculture began just after the Younger Dryas climate had shifted into one even more agreeable than today’s, but it was a thousand years or more before agriculture reached the Zagros (Hole, 1998).
This review has highlighted the dearth of solid information. Iran has immense geographic variability, but our knowledge of the Paleolithic comes largely from the Zagros mountain zone. We need investigations of the plateau and desert regions, especially around the playa lakes that formed during wetter periods. The southern coast, with its potential for a maritime adaptation focused on sea mammals and fish holds much Iranian Paleolithic promise for all periods. We also need accurate determinations of ages using modern techniques, and finally we need an accurate assessment of climate changes and their effects on the humans and other species. With new focused field research, Iran holds the promise of yielding substantial new discoveries of all periods.
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Neanderthal sculptures, named Nana and Flint, at the Gibraltar Museum.Credit...Jaap Scheeren for The New York Times
