Murder or Mishap? A 75,000-Year-Old Neanderthal From Shanidar Cave Was Likely Killed by a Spear

Have you heard of Shanidar Cave? You may know it from its famous ‘flower burial,’ where researchers in the 1970s proposed that a Neanderthal skeleton had been covered in flowers during their burial. This became a famous example of Neanderthals’ caring ability and symbolic behavior. The ‘flower burial’ has since been disproven, and its burials remain important for understanding Neanderthal cognitive ability and ritual behavior.

Now the remains of another Neanderthal have been unearthed. Well, technically they were unearthed in 2019 and 2022, but they’ve now been reported on. The remains belonged to an adult Neanderthal called Shanidar A. They are the oldest Neanderthal remains found in the cave so far, dated to roughly 75,000 years ago. Together with the other four Neanderthals, they support the idea that Neanderthals did have some form of complex mortuary behavior just like Homo sapiens.

But two things make this burial so unique. One, the individual seemed to have suffered a serious facial injury and lived. Then they suffered another. The researchers suggest a wooden spear may have been thrust through their body, penetrating their lungs and puncturing their shoulder blade, exiting on the other side. That’s important for two reasons: first, the injury suggests group care for the injured individual; second, the when, where, and why are still highly debated. And two, the spear wound provides indirect evidence for something that rarely survives such a long time: wooden weapons.

Neanderthals Cared for the Dead?

Whether early hominins, like Neanderthals, deliberately treated their dead in some ritualistic manner is still hotly debated. Neanderthals get a lot of attention (probably because they are so closely related to us and among the last evolutionary cousins with whom we interacted). Most researchers now accept that Neanderthals exhibited some form of mortuary behavior, though individual Neanderthal cases are still contested.

Either way, whether these burials were driven by practicality, emotion, or some symbolic belief remains unknown. Neanderthals may just as much have been motivated to go bury their uncle simply because he was stinking up the cave as they were to do so because that is how they mourned his loss.

Shanidar Cave holds a particularly prominent role in this debate. Located in Iraqi Kurdistan, it contains the remains of multiple Neanderthals, including the famous flower burial.

The ‘flower burial’ has been disproven. The pollen supposedly from scattered flowers likely came from simple natural incursions by rodents or burrowing bees. The fact that multiple Neanderthals are found here, at least one of whom had a pit dug for them, with some buried before the last had fully decomposed, suggests Neanderthals deliberately brought their dead to this cave for some purpose. And Shanidar A was one of them. 

Shanidar A belongs to a specific cluster of burials. Neanderthals in this cluster date to between 70,000 and 75,000 years ago. Shanidar A is, so far, the earliest burial.

Etched in Bone

Shanidar A’s remains were excavated between 2019 and 2022. They lay somewhat separated from the rest of the Neanderthals in the same cluster. Based on their similar orientation (head pointing east, and lying on their back), they likely still belonged to the same group.

Some time after much of their remains had decomposed, a flash flood took many of the remaining bones with it, leaving behind a right hand, three rib pieces, a left shoulder blade, and seven teeth. Six of those teeth likely belonged to them; the seventh, far less worn than the others, may have belonged to someone else.

The researchers believe the remains belonged to only one person. Based on the dorsal sulcus (a distinct groove on the back of the shoulder blade), they were a Neanderthal (this feature is less common in Homo sapiens). The seventh tooth, likely from another individual, also had taurodont roots. Basically, a Homo sapiens tooth has long roots and a short, relatively small pulp chamber. A Neanderthal’s molars have a thick, stretched-out pulp chamber and roots that basically only form near the end of the tooth, giving them a thick, bulky look.

But that’s not what caught their attention. Two other things did.

Firstly, one of the teeth had been split in half. Okay, not too crazy; maybe it broke after burial?

It didn’t.

The tooth split in half during life; what’s more, they kept using it to chew (to the point that it began to wear down, too). Ouch!

We moan and groan about a cavity; imagine the pain of having a tooth split in half: no medication, no dentist, just suck it up and keep chewing.

The second thing that caught their eye was a circular hole in the shoulder blade.

To get a closer look, the team micro-CT scanned the remains. Basically, they used a high-resolution X-ray method. The scans revealed four tiny bone fragments buried just beneath the shoulder blade. One of them fit back neatly, like a puzzle piece. It confirmed that the fragments had been knocked out of the hole as something passed through. It also provided confirmation that the hole was not the result of rodents or insects.

Based on the fragments, cracks, and direction of the splintering, whatever had caused it came from the front and punctured through the back around the time of death.

A Violent Death

Of the five individuals buried in the cluster (three adults, an infant, and Shanidar A), Shanidar A was the earliest, buried below Shanidar Z.

Their sex could not be determined, but based on the wear, they had been around 45 years old at the time of death. A ripe old age for a Neanderthal.

A considerable time before their death, a major facial injury caused at least one of their teeth to split. Yet they kept on living, possibly helped by those they lived with, though how remains unknown (I wonder how they could have helped? Maybe by chewing food for them or finding some numbing plants).

Then a spear likely ended their life. Fatal and traumatic injuries are not new to Neanderthal remains. But most cases are accidental: a terrible fall or a hunting accident caused by some animal.

This was made by another individual. Possibly a hunting accident where someone’s aim was just a little off, or perhaps intentional violence. Whether the wielder of the spear was human or Neanderthal is uncertain; what is likely is that the spear entered the left side of the individual, possibly punctured their lungs and major blood vessels, and came out the other side.

Very similar wounds have been found in animal shoulder blades. These are often interpreted as what is called a ‘heart shot’.

The circular shape fits well with a rounded wooden spear, rather than one tipped with a stone or bone point. Similar spears have been found in Clacton around 400,000 years ago and in Schöningen around 200,000 years ago. So the technology was available.

But wooden artifacts rarely survive that long, so the hole is indirect evidence of their existence. Kind of like how a bullet wound would prove the use of a gun in some capacity, even if the gun itself is gone.

Shanidar A is one of only a handful of possible interpersonal violence cases in the Middle to Late Pleistocene, including from Sima de los Huesos, Saint-Césaire, Qafzeh 25, and some Upper Paleolithic humans.

They matter because they offer insight into how and when violence and care arose in human evolution.

Shanidar A provides possible evidence for both care and violence. They survived a brutal facial injury and may have needed the help of others, as their ability to eat and speak may have been impaired. And it shows evidence of great violence, whether accidental or intentional. After their death, they were interred in a cave that was used again and again for generations to come. It does not sound like a group simply getting rid of a body. It sounds like Shanidar Cave was important, and Shanidar A was important enough to possibly be cared for and eventually laid to rest there.

Add the indirect evidence of a possible wooden spear, and Shanidar A gives us a rare glimpse into the life, death, care, violence, and technologies of a group of Neanderthals 75,000 years ago. That’s quite a lot for a scattering of bones.

Do you think Shanidar A’s injury was a hunting accident, or a sign of violence between individuals?

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Reference

Pomeroy, E., Hunt, C.O., López-Polín, L. et al. Evidence for funerary behaviour and lethal trauma in a new Neanderthal individual from Shanidar Cave. Sci Rep 16, 30042 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-69193-z