{"id":2609,"date":"2024-05-03T11:42:45","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T11:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/03\/face-of-75000-year-old-neanderthal-woman-reconstructed\/"},"modified":"2024-05-03T11:42:45","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T11:42:45","slug":"face-of-75000-year-old-neanderthal-woman-reconstructed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/03\/face-of-75000-year-old-neanderthal-woman-reconstructed\/","title":{"rendered":"Face of 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman reconstructed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Archaeologists have been able to piece together the skull of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton.<\/p>\n

Researchers from Cambridge University and Liverpool John Moores unearthed the skull at the Shanidar Cave site, 500 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

As part of a new Netflix<\/strong> documentary, Secrets of The Neanderthals, they were able to put the skull back together and recreate the face of the woman it once belonged to.<\/p>\n

The skull was first found in 2018, where it had been flattened to around two centimetres thick.<\/p>\n

It had been crushed, possibly by rockfall, soon after death and compacted further by tens of thousands of years of sediment.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Archaeologists named the skeleton Shanidar Z.<\/p>\n

‘High stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle’<\/strong><\/p>\n

To recreate the skull they had to piece together, by hand, more than 200 fragments of bone.<\/p>\n

Using sequencing on tooth enamel proteins they were able to determine the skeleton was likely a female.<\/p>\n

Her teeth were also used to gauge her age, thought to be in her mid-40s, through examining the levels of wear and tear with some of her front teeth worn down to the root.<\/p>\n

Shanidar Z’s physique also suggests they were female, as they stand around five feet tall, and have some of the smallest adult arm bones in Neanderthal fossil records.<\/p>\n

Dr Emma Pomeroy, a paleoanthropologist from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, described putting Shanidar Z back together as a “high stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle”.<\/p>\n

“Each skull fragment is gently cleaned while glue and consolidant are re-added to stabilise the bone, which can be very soft, similar in consistency to a biscuit dunked in tea,” she added.<\/p>\n

“A single block can take over a fortnight to process.”<\/p>\n

Pollen and food evidence found near remains<\/strong><\/p>\n

The cave where they found Shanidar Z was also home to the remains of 10 other Neanderthals, excavated more than 60 years ago.<\/p>\n

Clumps of ancient pollen surround one of the skeletons, something researchers initially suggested indicates the dead were buried with flowers.<\/p>\n

However, a study led by Professor Chris Hunt, of Liverpool John Moores University, came to the different conclusion that the pollen was left by bees burrowing into the cave floor.<\/p>\n

Further research since Shanidar Z was found detected microscopic evidence of charred food in nearby soil.<\/p>\n

Carbonised fragments of wild seeds, nuts and grasses suggest that Neanderthals not only prepared and cooked food, but did so in the presence of their dead.<\/p>\n

Dr Pomeroy: “The body of Shanidar Z was within arm’s reach of living individuals cooking with fire and eating.<\/p>\n

“For these Neanderthals, there does not appear to be that clear separation between life and death.<\/p>\n

“We can see that Neanderthals are coming back to one particular spot to bury their dead.<\/p>\n

“This could be decades or even thousands of years apart.<\/p>\n

“Is it just a coincidence, or is it intentional, and if so what brings them back?<\/p>\n

“As an older female, Shanidar Z would have been a repository of knowledge for her group, and here we are 75,000 years later, learning from her still.”<\/p>\n

Reconstructing Shanidar Z<\/strong><\/p>\n

Removing Shanidar Z’s remains posed a difficult problem because of how delicate they were.<\/p>\n

Archaeologists used a glue-like consolidant to strengthen the bones and surrounding sediment, before removing Shanidar Z in small foil-wrapped blocks from under seven-and-a-half metres of soil and rock.<\/p>\n

Then, in the lab in Cambridge, researchers took micro-CT scans of each block before beginning the slow process of diluting the glue and using the scans to guide the extraction of the bone fragments.<\/p>\n

Once the skull had been rebuilt, it was scanned and 3D-printed to form the basis of the reconstructed head.<\/p>\n

The reconstruction itself was done by world-leading paleo artists, and identical twins, Adrie and Alfons Kennis, who built up layers of fabricated muscle and skin to create the face.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on sky.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archaeologists have been able to piece together the skull of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton. Researchers from Cambridge University and Liverpool John Moores unearthed the skull at the Shanidar Cave site, 500 miles north of Baghdad, Iraq. As part of a new Netflix documentary, Secrets of The Neanderthals, they were able to put the skull back <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2609","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}