Flowery Funerals? The Controversial Neanderthal Found In An Iraqi Cave

[Judi Lynn]

Pollen was found embedded in a Neanderthal skeleton at the Shanidar Cave. Is this evidence of an elaborate flowery funeral?

TOM HALE
Feb 17, 2023 8:35 AM



The Shanidar Cave, an archaeological site located on Bradost Mountain in the Erbil Governorate of Kurdistan Region. Image credit: Hardcarf/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)


The discoveries made in the Shanidar Cave are some of the most thought-provoking and divisive Neanderthal remains ever recovered. Among the handful of skeletons found scattered within the cave, one appears to have been laid to rest alongside significant amounts of pollen.

Some have interpreted this as evidence of a grand burial ritual as if a funeral was held for the Neanderthal and flowers were placed upon their grave. If that claim is correct, it would be yet another example of how Neanderthals possessed a level of emotional intelligence on par with Homo sapiens and suggest the species were not the heavy-browed dopes they are still sometimes portrayed as.

However, this claim is not without its controversy. Found within the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq, the Shanidar Cave was excavated in the 1950s and 1960 by Ralph Solecki and his team from Columbia University.

At least nine Neanderthal skeletons were found buried here at the time, while a later excavation revealed another body. The number of remains found here indicates they were buried in an organized fashion, like a Neanderthal graveyard.

More:
https://www.iflscience.com/flowery-funerals-the-controversial-neanderthal-found-in-an-iraqi-cave-67585

[Baitball Blogger]

1. kick

[hlthe2b]

2. I'm not sure the flower association indicates an unexpected advanced emotional sophistication,

though it could.

But, I've seen dogs and other species react to flowers, just because of their scent. If this particular Neanderthal, likewise had shown an attraction to them in life, it would seem not so unexpected for another to have noticed and placed the flowers. Is that emotional IQ? Maybe.

Regardless, I have no problem believing we may have underestimated Neanderthals. I've maintained throughout my life that we underestimate the intelligence, including emotions, of a variety of animals and every year we see evidence to that effect.

[cyclonefence]

3. Funeral directors, the *real* oldest profession

[Warpy]

4. Naw, that would be "mother," and women are despised for it

I think cave burials, whether Neanderthal, Denisovan, or Homo Sap., were likely pretty special. People who were moving aourn from place to place gathering plants and chasing herds, would more likely have favored exposure burials, scavengers cleaning the bones and completing what they saw as the process of death.

This isn't the only burial where they've found a great deal of possen. Whether they were buried with glowers or with the pollen, itself, it speaks of care for the dead that naysayers would love to deny--they can't have donet that, they weren't US!

(Well, except they were and are us)

[cyclonefence]

5. I was joking, of course

about funeral directors and flowers at funerals, but I take your point about mothers.

What interests me is that so many primal deities were female, specifically fecund females. It's my uneducated opinion that when women allowed men to know how babies were conceived, it was all downhill. I mean, think about it. People had sex all the time; women suddenly changed: they stopped menstruating and their bellies grew big, and nine months later--hey presto! New life! There would be no way--in my opinion--for early man to connect sexual relations, especially sexual relations with any specific male, to pregnancy and birth. As far as early humans knew, all births were virgin births.

And females were worshiped and feared for their reproductive abilities. They bleed but they do not die; they can produce new life. I suspect that all early, early societies were matriarchal and matrilineal. I think women figured out the relationship between sex and babies first (like the Eleusinian Mysteries--is that what they were about?), and then unfortunately men caught on.

But I am an old lady who hallucinates, so what do I know?

[Warpy]

6. Oh, I think they knew, they just didn't care until the planet warmed up

and the only real way to make a decent living was to find a piece of clear land and start working it as farmland. Farming is hard work and once you start doing it, you can't stop and men wanted other males to share the workload and that meant sons. All of a sudden, women were relegated into more of the breeding stock and sons were favored over daughters (men being blind to the backbreaking labor of women) and that's all reflected in a lot of religious texts.

In fact, I think the reason we have as much interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans as we do was that it was highly unlikely to occur. I can imagine preferring a Neanderthal teddy bear if I had just weaned a child and didn't want another one so soon, but.... Our remote ancestors might have had a completely different outlook but neither species was stupid.