Shanidar Cave: Neanderthal Burials and the 'Flower Burial'

Shanidar Cave in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan is one of the most important Neanderthal sites in the world. Between 1951 and 1960 the American archaeologist Ralph Solecki uncovered the remains of ten Neanderthals there, living very roughly 75,000 to 45,000 years ago. The finds included a badly injured man who had survived for years and a burial that became famous as the “flower burial”, both of which changed how the public and scientists imagined Neanderthals.

The cave and its setting

Shanidar Cave lies on Bradost Mountain, in Erbil Governorate in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. Its broad mouth faces south over the valley of the Great Zab, a tributary of the Tigris. The chamber is large and airy, and local Kurdish herders were still using it as a seasonal shelter for people and animals when archaeologists arrived.

The cave’s deposits are around 14 metres deep and record a long sequence of human use. The lowest layer excavated, known as Layer D, contained Middle Palaeolithic stone tools of the Mousterian type, associated with Neanderthals. Higher layers held Upper Palaeolithic tools made by modern humans, and near the top Solecki found a cemetery of about 35 people from around 10,600 years ago, from the period just before farming took hold in the region.

Ralph Solecki’s excavations

Ralph Solecki (1917–2019), working for the Smithsonian Institution and later Columbia University, led four field seasons at Shanidar in 1951, 1953, 1956–57 and 1960. His wife, the archaeologist Rose Solecki, investigated the nearby open-air site of Zawi Chemi Shanidar.

The first Neanderthal found, in 1953, was an infant. The major discoveries came in 1957, when three adults (Shanidar 1, 2 and 3) were uncovered, and in 1960, when further individuals including Shanidar 4 were found. In all, Solecki’s team recovered the remains of ten Neanderthals, eight adults and two infants. Several had been crushed beneath fallen rocks from the cave roof.

Solecki planned to return, but political conditions in Iraq prevented further work for more than half a century. The American anthropologist Erik Trinkaus later produced the standard scientific description of the skeletons, published in 1983.

Shanidar 1: survival after injury

Shanidar 1, an adult man who probably died in his 40s or older, is one of the most studied Neanderthals. He had suffered a blow to the left side of his face that may have left him blind in that eye. His right arm was withered and may have been partly lost below the elbow, and his right leg and foot showed signs of injury and arthritis. A 2017 study of bony growths in his ear canals suggested he was also seriously deaf.

These injuries had healed, showing that he lived for many years afterwards. Many researchers have argued that someone with such disabilities could hardly have survived in a harsh environment without help from others, and Shanidar 1 is widely cited as evidence that Neanderthals cared for injured members of their group. Some scholars caution against assuming modern motives such as compassion, but the basic fact of long survival is not in doubt.

Another individual, Shanidar 3, had a partly healed wound to a rib caused by a sharp object. It has been interpreted as a possible injury from a thrown weapon, though who threw it is unknown.

The “flower burial” debate

In 1960 Solecki collected soil samples around Shanidar 4, an adult found lying on his or her side. The French palynologist (pollen specialist) Arlette Leroi-Gourhan found that some samples contained clusters of pollen from several flowering plants, including species related to yarrow, cornflower, grape hyacinth and hollyhock. Because pollen usually spreads as scattered grains, the clumps suggested that whole flowers had been present.

Solecki concluded that the dead had been laid to rest with flowers, and in 1971 he published a popular book titled Shanidar: The First Flower People. The idea fitted the mood of the time and transformed the image of Neanderthals from brutish cavemen into people capable of ritual and feeling.

Critics soon offered other explanations. The Persian jird, a burrowing rodent common in the area, stores seeds and flowers in its burrows, and burrows were found in the deposits. Pollen could also have been carried in by wind, by later visitors or by excavation workers. More recently, members of the new excavation team have suggested that burrowing solitary bees may have introduced much of the pollen. The flower burial is therefore an open question, not an established fact.

The new excavations and Shanidar Z

In 2015 a team led by Graeme Barker of the University of Cambridge and Chris Hunt of Liverpool John Moores University, working with the Kurdistan Regional Government, resumed excavations. Their aim was to relocate Solecki’s trenches, date the layers with modern methods and study how the Neanderthal remains came to be there.

In 2018 they found the flattened skull and upper body of another Neanderthal, named Shanidar Z, close to where Shanidar 4 had been excavated. Shanidar Z appears to have been placed in a hollow in the cave floor, and the team argues that the cluster of individuals in this part of the cave reflects repeated deliberate burial at a spot perhaps marked by a large standing rock. Shanidar Z is now thought to have been a woman in her forties who lived roughly 75,000 years ago. Her skull was painstakingly reassembled and, in 2024, a model of her face was made public in a television documentary.

The new work has also revealed details of everyday life. A 2022 study of charred food remains from the Neanderthal layers identified wild pulses, nuts and grasses, some of which appear to have been pounded and cooked into flatbread-like or porridge-like foods. This adds to growing evidence that Neanderthal diets were not limited to meat and that their cooking involved several preparation steps.

Shanidar and the image of Neanderthals

Shanidar became a turning point in views of Neanderthals. In the early 20th century, the skeleton from La Chapelle-aux-Saints had been reconstructed as a stooped, ape-like brute. Shanidar 1 and the flower burial helped replace that picture with one of social, caring people who treated their dead with some care.

Today the question of Neanderthal burial is debated across many sites in Europe and western Asia. Shanidar remains central to that debate because it combines several individuals, a long sequence of layers and, since 2015, modern excavation methods. The site also sheds light on the region where Neanderthals and early modern humans may have met, as at Skhul and Qafzeh in the Levant.

Timeline

• c. 75,000 years ago: Approximate age of Shanidar Z, according to the new excavation team.
• c. 75,000 to 45,000 years ago: Neanderthals use the cave; estimates for individual burials vary.
• 1951: Ralph Solecki begins excavating Shanidar Cave.
• 1953: The first Neanderthal remains, an infant, are found.
• 1957: Shanidar 1, 2 and 3 are excavated.
• 1960: Shanidar 4 and other individuals are found; soil samples are taken for pollen.
• 1975: Arlette Leroi-Gourhan publishes the pollen analysis in Science.
• 2015: A Cambridge-led team resumes excavations.
• 2018: Shanidar Z is discovered; the find is published in 2020.

Why it matters

Shanidar Cave gave the world its most famous evidence for Neanderthal care of the injured and a vivid, if disputed, image of flowers placed with the dead. Its renewed excavation shows how old discoveries can be tested with new methods, and it keeps Neanderthals at the centre of questions about what makes behaviour recognisably human.