The remains of a Neanderthal recently discovered in a cave in Iraq demonstrate the excruciating brutality of life in the Palaeolithic. The Neanderthal had a severely smashed but healed jaw and a spear hole straight through their shoulder, which is evidence of a likely fatal injury.
However, given that survival after such a massive, earlier dental injury would only have been possible with long-term care, the remarkable find may also provide early evidence of compassion, says at the University of Cambridge.
“We sometime romanticise hunter-gatherer or pre-agriculture lifestyles as peaceful and close to the natural world, or at the other extreme, we think of life in the Palaeolithic as [Thomas] Hobbes described it,” says Pomeroy. In 1651, the political philosopher Hobbes wrote about life in ungoverned societies as “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”. “But it’s not that simple, and both are extreme stereotypes,” she says.
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The 75,000-year-old partial skeleton, known as Shanidar A, was recovered in 2019 and 2022 from the Shanidar cave in northern Iraq and consists of a largely complete right hand, two left ribs, a right rib fragment, a left scapula and six teeth. At least five Neanderthal individuals have been found at Shanidar since it was first excavated in the 1950s, and the way they were placed in the ground is often seen as evidence that these ancient humans buried some of their dead.
While the sex of Shanidar A couldn’t be determined, the wear on the teeth suggested that the remains were those of an individual who lived to be about 45 years old – a long life by Neanderthal standards.
They must have been hit very hard in the face at some point in their life, which made one of their bottom front teeth split in half and also probably fractured their jaw, says Pomeroy.
The broken edge of the tooth became covered in hardened plaque, showing they continued living afterwards without that part of the tooth.
But, says Pomeroy, the person must have been in terrible pain. Although there is evidence from other archaeological sites that Neanderthals used mild, natural painkillers, “I don’t think they would have touched this pain”, she says.
Such a dental injury would have also made it difficult to eat, drink or talk, and would almost certainly have required a period of intensive care from the individual’s group, she says.
“The half tooth that remained in their mouth must have stuck out through the bone and the gums, meaning the hardened plaque, known as calculus, formed all over the top and bottom of the tooth,” says Pomeroy.
She says the force of the blow also made the teeth next to the broken one rotate slightly.
Shanidar A’s scapula, or shoulder blade, had also survived – and the team were stunned to see that it carried a perfectly round hole that was probably made by a wooden spear rather than a stone-tipped weapon.
The location of bone fragments also recovered from Shanidar A’s remains indicate that the spear entered the individual’s body on the left-hand side while they were facing forward.
The team says such an injury would have “penetrated all the way through the chest, including the lungs and potentially major blood vessels, likely leading to a rapid death”.
What is unknown is whether the injury was sustained while hunting or through violence.
, at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Spain, wasn’t part of the team but recently helped discover the remains of wooden Neanderthal spears at site called Abric Romanà near Barcelona.
She says Neanderthals, like us, were complex beings, capable of very different behaviours depending on the circumstances.
“What I find most striking about Shanidar is how it brings together two seemingly opposite sides of human behaviour,” says Saladié. “We have evidence of lethal violence, but also evidence of care for injured individuals and complex funerary practices.”
Scientific Reports
