LONDON — She looks pretty good for her 75,000 years.
Especially considering that her skull was likely shattered into 200 pieces by a rockfall before being carefully pieced together by scientists over the past six years.
This is Shanidar Z., a Neanderthal woman whose face was reconstructed by archaeologists at the University of Cambridge in England. In a report posted on its website Thursday, the university gives experts a new idea of what their ancient cousin actually looked like by reconsidering her facial features rather than the skull itself. He said that he gained a lot of insight.
It turns out they may have been more similar than we thought, both in terms of facial features and thoughts about death.
“Neanderthal and human skulls look very different from our own,” Dr Emma Pomeroy, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cambridge, said in the report. “Neanderthal skulls had huge eyebrow ridges, no chin, and a protruding midface, making the nose more prominent. But the reconstructed faces show that those differences were not as noticeable in life. This suggests that it was not.
Given the similarities with humans, “it's probably easier to understand how interbreeding occurred between our species,” she added. “Almost everyone alive today still has Neanderthal DNA.”
According to the Smithsonian Institution, Neanderthals are a type of early human that evolved from a common ancestor with Homo sapiens (modern humans) between 700,000 and 300,000 years ago. We lived together for a while until Neanderthals became extinct about 40,000 years ago.
They were shorter and stockier than us, but had large snouts that humidified and warmed the cold air from the areas they lived. However, their brains were just as large, if not larger, when compared to their smaller bodies.
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Shanidar Z was discovered in 2018 and is one of 10 Neanderthals discovered in a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, which has become an iconic site for archaeologists.
After her face was recreated as part of the documentary The Secret of the Neanderthals, produced by the BBC and released on Netflix on Thursday, the university said she was “probably the best-preserved creature discovered this century.” “He is a good person,” he said.
Her skull was flattened and contained 200 bone fragments, which were “very soft and could be as hard as a biscuit soaked in tea,” Pomeroy said. The researchers used glue to strengthen the bones, then removed them into blocks wrapped in foil. Back in the lab, the team diluted the glue, took CT scans of each bone, and began the painstaking process of piecing the bones together freehand.
“It's like a high-stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle,” Pomeroy added. “Processing a single block can take him more than two weeks.”
The reconstructed skull was scanned again and 3D printed, allowing identical twins Adrie and Alphonse Kenneth, the world's leading paleoarchaeologists, to begin building layers of muscle and skin to reveal the face itself. is completed. Only half of Shanidhar Z was found. So, without her pelvis, the team had to use tooth enamel proteins to determine her gender.
The cave where she was discovered, located about 80 miles north of the Iraqi city of Erbil, has enjoyed legendary status in the field since American archaeologist Ralph Solecki discovered Neanderthal remains there in the 1950s. Obtained.
There is a huge vertical rock at this site, which experts say may have been used as a marker for this burial site, which suggests that our relatives are more likely than previously thought. This suggests that he may have had a deeper understanding of death.
“Neanderthals have had a bad reputation ever since they were first discovered over 150 years ago,” Professor Graham Barker of the University of Cambridge, who is leading the cave excavation, said in a report on Thursday. stated as.
“Our findings indicate that Shanidar Neanderthals may have thought about death and its aftermath in ways not too different from our closest evolutionary relatives.”
Source: www.nbcnews.com
