ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS - Neanderthal Cave Excavated // Shanidar / Human Evolution / Neanderthals

[Music] Neandertals today in most circles it's an insult a byword for ignorant and stupidity but what were these early humans really like well new revelations over the last couple of years uncovered at one archaeological site have been providing us with fascinating new information about our long extinct close cousins usually associated with ancient Europe these findings however come not from a site in Europe but in the Middle East at an imposing and vast cave in Iraqi Kurdistan an area bearing the mark of untold epochs of the human story dating all the way back to prehistory perhaps even being near the roots Homo sapiens first took out of Africa this is shanidar cave and the newly discovered burials found here may hold one more piece in the puzzle of how these extinct hominids viewed the world around them and their place within it let's take a look [Music] chanita this is an ancient landscape in mobile and fixed for tens of thousands of years not far from here the mighty Assyrian Empire once dominated the known world followed by Empire after Empire and Kingdom after Kingdom down through the long millennia none of them even amounting to a tiny fraction of the time this imposing monument on the landscape has stood here it is underneath however where things get really interesting a large cave system was uncovered here and excavated in the early 1950s by archaeologist Ralph's a less key little did he know but this place was about to become one of the most important though little-known discoveries of the 20th century here in these caves was found the partial remains of at least 10 men women and children though these weren't people as we would know them but in the ander tells our closest hominid cousins who walked the earth at the same time as us for most of our history the finds alone are fascinating though many similar sites had already been excavated by this point what made shanidar really special was what was found alongside the remains one of the graves here known as shanidar 4 was surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen a coincidence perhaps it's impossible to know either way for certain but Zaleski and his team suggested these to be the remains of flowers laid to rest with the deceased perhaps an early form of funerary rites a dear relative being laid to rest all those generations ago very possibly the first archaeological traces of human nature excavations continued for another nine years and so less Keys findings finally immortalized in the 1971 book the first flower people the cave was left again for another half century now nearly 50 years later so less Keys trench has been reopened by a team of Cambridge archaeologists working closely with the Kurdish authorities their findings are remarkable we've long suspected that anatomically modern humans Homo sapiens us have considered our place in the world for as long as we've inhabited it stone age artwork and archaeological evidence tell us that much sophisticated attempts to represent deities or even just made for a bit of fun but what about our cousins the ever maligned Neandertals for author William Golding of Lord of the Flies Fame writing in his 1955 masterpiece the inheritors Neandertals didn't hunt and remained in awe at the human mastery of fire but was this really the case in recent years the argument has shifted the other way suggesting Neandertals to be just as sophisticated as modern humans and maybe not too dissimilar in their nature cave art has been found around the world from as early as 40 thousand years ago as well as items made for artistic or spiritual merit rather than day-to-day use and we don't actually know for certain whether these earliest examples were made by anatomically modern humans was this abstract thinking limited to us or did it extend much further back to our common ancestors even further back in time such as Homo erectus we know now from DNA evidence that part of the genetic makeup of modern humans derives from our long-lost cousins [Music] particularly in Europe where as much as 2 or 3 percent of some people's DNA is Neanderthal since Celestia's investigations in the 1950s much has changed in the field of Neanderthal studies the idea that they treated their dead with reverence has long been debated varying over time and space rarely however do we have the opportunity to apply modern techniques to search a grave but over the last couple of years at shanidar excavators have done just that just like archaeologists periodically returned to the cave systems here it seems that our Neanderthal forebears did the same with hunter-gatherer groups returning generation after generation to bury their dead for a long long time the prominent outcropping here potentially serving as a marker for returning clans the sediment between remains suggests significant gaps between visits may be of many hundreds of years maybe less this is a large cave so maybe these groups continued returning here without actually realizing they were being buried at the same place as previous generations we simply don't know for certain of course it could be a coincidence though the sheer amount of separate burials in a relatively small area does seem to suggest importance placed here and in turn fresh opportunities to understand Neandertal capacity for symbolic thought and behavioral variation the new burial excavated here found just under Celeste Keyes clusters known as shanidar zedd is thought to date to around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago this is the first articulated Neanderthal uncovered in Southwest Asia in more than 25 years the sex is undetermined though teeth analysis suggests an adult's individual well into middle age or older at the time of death perhaps an important member of the group afforded special status in death the skull of the individual as well as the bones of the upper body had been crushed by the sheer weight of sediment accumulating above over the eons the rest of the body however was mostly intact interestingly the left hand had been raised and positioned under the head so as to look almost alike the figure was sleeping behind the head two stones may have been placed but this being done as part of a ceremony in symbolic reverence for the deceased we simply don't know yet maybe we'll find out more definitively in the future as always investigations continue at this fascinating site you've been watching archeology news don't forget to Like and subscribe tell me what you think in the comments and I'll see you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Pete Kelly

Views: 475,952

Rating: 4.8649106 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, neanderthals, human story, human evolution, evolution, hominids, homo sapoens, homo sapiens, Ralph solecki, solecki, flower people, William golding, lord of the flies, the inheritors

Id: qEeGf9zKjz4

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 12 2020