How sapiens were Neanderthals?: new burial study (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 18, 2020, 19:43 (1740 days ago) @ David Turell

Further pursuit of a burial site in Iraq:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2233918-50000-year-old-remains-suggest-neanderthal...

"Neanderthals really did bury their dead. Archaeologists in Iraq have discovered a new Neanderthal skeleton that appears to have been deliberately buried around 50,000 years ago.
“We are quite confident,” says Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge.

"The first evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead emerged after archaeologist Ralph Solecki excavated Shanidar cave in northern Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s. The cave eventually yielded the remains of 10 Neanderthals, including one dubbed Shanidar 4, which was found with clumps of pollen – suggesting the body had been deliberately placed in a grave and flowers scattered on it. The finding was one of several lines of evidence that has led to a reassessment of Neanderthals as highly intelligent and not the shambling brutes of earlier portrayals.

"However, the “flower burial” suggestion has been controversial. “There are burrowing rodents that use the cave and they sometimes take flowers into their burrows,” says Pomeroy. Some of the workmen helping with the dig also carried flowers. “Enough doubt was cast that people became quite sceptical.”

***

"Pomeroy’s team found multiple lines of evidence that the Neanderthal was deliberately buried, including that fact that the sediment layer around the body is visibly different to the layer below. “The one containing the bones is much darker,” says Pomeroy.

***

"It isn’t clear if the remains belong to a new individual or to one of the previous finds, several of which are incomplete. Pomeroy says the body was probably accidentally cut in half by the original excavators, who removed the flower burial in a large block of rock.

"Modern humans were burying their dead at least 100,000 years ago, says Pomeroy. We don’t know whether Neanderthals devised the behaviour themselves or if they learned it from humans, but we do know Neanderthals and humans encountered each other around the time of the Shanidar burials."

Comment: Still battling against the ape man view of Neanderthals.