Neanderthal murder mystery reveals a tale of violence and compassion

By Katie Hunt, CNN

(CNN) — Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a Neanderthal whose life came to a brutal end 75,000 years ago when a sharpened wooden spear plunged into the individual’s chest in one of the earliest known examples of a possible homicide.

A neat, circular hole in the hominin’s shoulder blade suggested the weapon penetrated the chest, traveling through the lung and major arteries before punching the hole in the bone. It likely killed the Neanderthal instantly or shortly after, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports published on Thursday.

But the archaeologists who excavated the new skeletal fragments from Shanidar Cave in the Kurdistan region of Iraq say the fossils weave a complex tale of Neanderthal life and death, beyond what appeared to be deliberate violence.

During separate excavations in 2019 and 2022, the team found the Neanderthal’s scapula — a flat, triangular bone — preserved in 24 feet (7.5 meters) of rock and earth, along with a mostly complete right hand, two left ribs, a right rib fragment and seven teeth. The Neanderthal, known as Shanidar A, was thought to have been about age 45 at the time of death, but archaeologists could not determine the individual’s sex.

The fatal wound was not the only injury the hominin sustained.

One tooth found at the site was split, suggesting blunt-force trauma to the face. However, the build-up of dental calculus over the tooth’s root canal suggested that the injury likely occurred earlier in life and the individual may have received care from other members of the group, such as the preparation of soft, mashed food that would have been easier to eat. Previous research from the same site suggests that Neanderthals may have soaked and cooked meals of plants and legumes together.

“Surviving a blow that splits a tooth in this fashion, then continuing to live and eat for a period of at least a year and maybe more, would have required care and support from other Neanderthals,” said the study’s lead author Emma Pomeroy, an associate professor in the evolution of health, diet and disease at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, in a news release.

“The remains of Shanidar A reflect the dual nature of so much of what we recognise as human. On the one hand, we have evidence of a terribly violent end. On the other, this was clearly an individual who was cared for during their lifetime,” Pomeroy added in the press release.

The findings add to growing evidence of social support and care among Neanderthals. For example, a 2017 study on a fossil found in the same cave revealed a male Neanderthal who had been deaf, paralyzed in the arm and likely partially blinded from head trauma, yet he lived far into adulthood — about 50 to 60 years old — suggesting others may have cared for him.

A fossilized ear bone found at a site in Spain offered evidence in 2024 that Neanderthals may have cared for a child with Down syndrome, while another discovery in Siberia published in May suggested the extinct humans practiced a crude form of dentistry, potentially on each other.

Wooden weapon

Pomeroy and her colleagues determined that the 15 millimeter-wide circular perforation in the shoulder blade was likely caused by a thrusting weapon or a projectile made of sharpened wood. A spear tipped with stone would have left an angular or lozenge-shaped hole, they wrote in the study.

It’s possible the death was a hunting accident, but Pomeroy said the position of the wound and the force required to push it all the way through the Neanderthal’s body “bear the hallmarks of an intended kill shot directed towards the heart.”

Fossils from the Middle Paleolithic era, or Middle Stone Age, from 250,000 to around 30,000 years ago, commonly show signs of traumatic injury, but these wounds are mostly linked to probable accidents, perhaps due to hunting at close quarters, the study noted. Examples of interpersonal violence are rare among Stone Age remains, only becoming common later as hunting and gathering gave way to settled farming communities.

The authors said that Shanidar A’s wound may be the earliest example of an ancient human relative killed with a wooden spear. The remains of another Neanderthal unearthed from the cave in the 1960s and dated to around 50,000 years old, also showed evidence of a puncture wound but it aligned more closely with a stone-tipped spear injury. Forensic analysis of hominin skulls from the cave Sima de los Huesos in Spain indicate intentional lethal violence that occurred 430,000 years ago — earlier than Shanidar A’s demise — although it’s not clear what kind of weapon was used.

Neanderthals lived across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia for around 300,000 years until they went extinct around 40,000 years ago. DNA analysis from present-day humans has revealed that, during the tens of thousands of years the two groups overlapped, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens occasionally encountered one another and interbred.

The authors noted the circumstances surrounding the violent act, and whether other early humans could have been involved in the individual’s death, were completely unknown. The team said they plan to conduct future experiments to better understand the level of force necessary to inflict the wound, which could help clarify if foul play actually occurred between Neanderthals.

It’s difficult for scientists to distinguish accidental injury from deliberate violence, but “a spear wound through the shoulder while facing the victim” supports the latter, said John McNabb, an emeritus professor of paleolithic archaeology at the University of Southampton’s Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins.

Finding two individuals at the same site with serious yet healed injuries “strongly suggests that caring for others was a part of this group’s behaviour, and given the timescale we are dealing with, over a long period of time,” added McNabb, who was not involved in the new study.

The acts of compassion are a “deeply significant discovery in itself,” he said in an email. “But it is at odds with the killing of Shanidar A with a spear. Here we are on less sure ground. Murder? Attack from a rival Neanderthal group? We just do not know.”

While the study was unable to accurately determine the cause of death, the evidence presented by Pomeroy and her team “adds to another chapter of both Neanderthal trauma and Neanderthal care,” said Bruce Hardy, an anthropology professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“The site of Shanidar continues to astound even some 60 years after its initial excavation,” he said via email.

Burial place

The cave where Shanidar A was found is a well-known hominin burial site. In 1960 researchers discovered several graves that contained pollen traces, which led the field to believe that Neanderthals may have interred their dead with flowers — the first findings to challenge the prevailing view that the ancient human species were unintelligent and brutish.

Pomeroy’s team led subsequent research, which began new excavations at the site in 2015, that has cast doubt on the flower burial theory. Instead, they suspect the pollen discovered among the graves may have been introduced in much more recent history via pollinating bees.

While the pollen evidence may still be up for debate, Pomeroy and her colleagues believe Neanderthals repeatedly returned to Shanidar Cave to lay their dead to rest, including the remains of Shanidar A. This suggests they cared for each other in death as well as life. Including Shanidar A, at least five Neanderthal individuals, four adults and an infant, were found in a small space tucked behind a rock with a height of about two meters (6 feet and 5 inches). The new Neanderthal remains are part of a “remarkable cluster” that shared the same rituals around death,” Pomeroy said in an email.

“They were placed at different times, but within living memory of each other — so over the space of years or decades — indicating this spot in the cave and perhaps the cave itself was important in some way,” she added.

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