Archaeologists have disproved one of the main myths about Neanderthals

The grave, excavated in 1960, led researchers to hypothesize that Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers, challenging the prevailing belief that ancient people were dumb and cruel. Now scientists say key site evidence that helped shape the study of Neanderthals may have been misinterpreted, CNN reported.

As recalled by the American channel, archaeologist Ralph Solecki discovered the “flower burial”, as it has come to be called, while exploring the Shanidar cave in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. In the 1950s, he found several Neanderthal specimens, and in 1960 he identified a male skeleton that became known as Shanidar 4. The 65,000-year-old remains were surrounded by clumps of pollen.

Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, an archaeologist and pollen expert at the time, hypothesized that these clusters were anthers, pollen-containing structures in flowers. She and Solecki suggested that Neanderthals laid flowers on graves in much the same way that many people do today.

“You still find this story in many archeology textbooks to this day,” says Chris Hunt, professor emeritus at Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom and lead author of the new study at the Shanidar site. “That was one of the things that convinced Solecki that Neanderthals weren’t just hideous and cruel, as people had mostly thought up to that point. But in reality, they were caring people and took care of each other.”

Over the years, scientists have found new evidence of Neanderthal intelligence and sophistication, including art, ropes, and tools. However, elements of the “flower burial” theory did not seem to converge.

Hunt and colleagues were working in Shanidar Cave in 2014 when they found traces of ancient pollen on the surface of the cave floor. If they had come in with Neanderthal bouquets, they would have been buried under thousands of years of sediment and debris, just like Neanderthal skeletons.

“For us, this was a sign that perhaps something was happening with the burial of flowers,” Hunt notes.

A new study published in the journal Archaeological Science puts forward an alternative hypothesis: instead of entering the cave with funeral bouquets, the pollen could have entered along with the pollinators living in the caves.

Hunt said that he initially assumed that the tracks were the remains of excavations from a decade ago.

“In fact, my first thought was that Solecki polluted this place,” Hunt said, possibly putting pollen on his shoes decades ago.

Analysis of the pollen showed it to be thousands of years old, so it’s not a modern-day pollutant. But the find supported the idea that the pollen entered the cave independently of humans or Neanderthals.

Further examination of the pollen accumulations found near the skeletons further cast doubt on the original hypothesis. Some of the pollen came from flowers that bloom at different times of the year, making it hard to see how they could have gotten here together. And when Hunt saw that one of the clumps contained pollen from more than one plant species, he took it as a “wake-up call” because the flower’s anther only contained pollen from that species. Even if two different types of flowers were in the same bouquet, there would be no point in having the pollen of two different types of flowers stuck together so tightly.

However, there is an easy way for pollen grains from different types of flowers to stick together: bees.

“There are many reports of foraging bees or more than one species,” Hunt said. “What the bee does is collect the pollen in a little bag that she carries on her legs. They return to the nest and the bees either eat them or save them for the future.”

Hunt found examples of both ancient and modern burrows made by ground-nesting bees at Shanidar. While he and his colleagues have yet to find traces of pollen in these burrows, he said, “I still think it’s a very likely way” for pollen to enter near Neanderthal graves.

Paul Pettitt, professor of paleolithic archeology at Durham University in the UK, who was not involved in the new study, said: “This is a piece of perfect science.”

“The big problem is why all the pollen is crushed and kind of flattened into these little clumps,” Pettitt said. In his opinion, Hunt, “seems to really understand this issue to show that, most likely, they were bees.”

While there is no conclusive evidence that pollen came to us via bees, “this article makes the original flower burial hypothesis very unlikely as formulated by Solecki,” said Fred Smith, professor emeritus of anthropology and biological sciences at the University of Illinois. who did not participate in the study. “And I really think that they demonstrated by the flattening and degeneration of the pollen that the pollen is ancient, it has not been carried in by modern pollution.”

While the work of Hunt and colleagues suggests that the flower burial hypothesis is incorrect, recent work on the Shanidar Cave Neanderthals confirms the basic idea of ​​the old theory: Neanderthals cared for their dead.

The cave itself, apparently, carried some meaning, since the skeletons in it were buried separately, with a difference of several years. “As far as I can tell, there must have been stories in their groups that, ‘Well, that’s what Grandma and I used to do, and now that young Joe is dead, maybe we should put him in the same place’ Hunt said.

As CNN notes, the skeletons in the cave share a common orientation and arrangement, indicating that there may have been some sort of meaning attached to how they were buried.