Has The Mystery Of Neanderthals’ Flower Burial At Shanidar Cave Been Solved?

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com -  Scientists have re-examined Neanderthals' perplexing Flower Burial at Shanidar Cave and made a fascinating discovery.

The story started when researchers unearthed the well-preserved upper body skeleton of an adult Neanderthal who lived about 70,000 years ago.

Wild flowers at Shanidar Cave, photographed May 5, 2023. Photograph by C.O. Hunt.

As previously reported on Ancient Pages, "the place of this fascinating discovery is Shanidar Cave in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, which is one the most important archaeological sites of the mid-20th century.

In Shanidar Cave - excavated in the 1950s by archaeologist Ralph Solecki - scientists discovered many fossils of ten Neanderthals. The bones belonged to seven adults and three infants. Among them were men, women, and children.

Some were clustered together, with clumps of ancient pollen surrounding one of the skeletons.

The recent find offers fresh evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead and conducted funerary rites with flowers, but critics have argued regarding the "flower burial," saying the pollen could have been modern contamination from people working and living in the cave or from burrowing rodents or insects.

Does evidence from this extraordinary site actually point to death rituals or burial of any kind? Were Neanderthals really capable of such cultural sophistication?

These were some of the many questions researchers at Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of London tried to answer while reviewing the evidence from a palynological viewpoint

In their science paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the research team discusses the pollen found in the grave sites and argues it was placed there by non-humans. According to researchers, nesting solitary bees probably explain pollen clumps found at the burial sites in the Shanidar Cave.

Shanidar Cave ‘Flower Burial’ Hypothesis

It has previously been proposed by Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, Ralph Solecki, and many other researchers the flowers found at the burial site are a sign of the Neanderthals' empathy and care.  towards the dead.

A number of scientists suggested that the body of the Neanderthal was placed on a bed of these flowers, possibly for medical reasons and/or as a mark of affection and/or respect.

Although accepted quite widely and very influential, the hypothesis has been debated over many years.

Another intriguing Flower Burial hypothesis suggested the possible emplacement of the pollen by burrowing rodents.

Inside the Shanidar Cave. Credit: Hardscarf - CC BY-SA 4.0

Scientists have previously suggested emplacement of the pollen by jirds (Meriones persicus), small rodents known to bring flowers into their burrows – whose skeletal remains are known from the Shanidar Cave sediments in small numbers.  A plausible scenario is that flowers could have been blown by strong winds into the cave or that rodents might have brought plants into their nests amongst the bones.

The Pollen Is Contemporary With The Neanderthals

In the recent study, scientists explain, "the pollen around the Shanidar 4 Neanderthal shows flattening and corrosion in the illustrations provided by Leroi-Gourhan. This is consistent with it being ancient. We can therefore discount the possibility that the pollen was introduced by Solecki and his colleagues walking through pollen-rich pasture to the cave and instead conclude that the pollen is likely to be approximately contemporary with the Neanderthal with which it is associated."

Protecting The Dead?

"The original suggestion of the ‘Flower Burial’ relied on the idea that Neanderthals were mourning or may have been laying medically-active plants under the body. The flowering heads of Centaurea solstitialis bear sharp hard spines over 2 cm long. If flowers of this species were involved, while it is plausible that these could have been gathered for medicinal reasons, their choice for placing a dead body on is difficult to understand in terms of modern notions of empathy," the researchers write in the study.

What Was The Purpose Of The Wood?

Wood fragments were found in the vicnity of Shanidar Z. "While microscopic wood fragments can be fairly common in sediments of caves frequented by early people, the coincidence of wood fragments and pollen of immature plants might point to branches and other vegetation being placed over the bodies. In a scenario of this sort, the very spiky heads of Centaurea solstitialis, with branches and other vegetation, might be thought to help to defend the bodies from scavengers, scientists say.

A Re-Examination Of The ‘Flower Burial’

"This current reappraisal suggests that Solecki's hypothesis — that all of the pollen clumps associated with Shanidar 4 were the result of flowers being placed under a deceased Neanderthal – is very unlikely. There are strong reasons to do with the seasonality of flowering of the species concerned to doubt Solecki's scenario of a single flower-gathering event.

The mixed clumps of pollen are more consistent with an alternative view, that ground-nesting bees were responsible for the emplacement of the clumps of pollen over one or more spring flowering seasons, while their corroded and flattened state might suggest that the pollen is ancient and thus that this happened more-or-less contemporarily with the Neanderthal activity.

Credit: Pixabay - Buntysmum - Public Domain

The situation may, however, have been more complex than this. If Leroi-Gourhan was correct in identifying some of the pollen clumps as immature grains, there is a possibility that immature flowers were introduced by some mechanism.

Many possibilities might account for this: the actions of small mammals, on the feet of Neanderthals or animals, in the gut contents of animals taken by the Neanderthals, or because the Neanderthals were gathering plants for food, or that they placed plants below or over the body of Shanidar 4. The finding of wood fragments in association with Shanidar 4 and wood fragments and pollen in the body cavity of Shanidar Z might be consistent with vegetation being placed around these bodies but is not conclusive.

The suggestion of flowers being blown into the cave seems unlikely, since in our observations over 12 excavation campaigns since 2015, some in spring and some at the end of the summer, only dead leaves from nearby oak trees have been blown into the cave. At this point, we can only conclude that the ‘Flower Burial’ hypothesis seems unlikely, that nesting bees were probably responsible for some of the pollen clumps – certainly the mixed ones – and that there is a possibility that if immature pollen were involved it could have come from plants placed over or under the body.

Credit: Adobe Stock - Agustin

Although the ‘Flower Burial’ hypothesis seems increasingly unlikely, the cluster of Neanderthal bodies associated with Shanidar 4 is certainly associated with mortuary behaviour – the placement of bodies. Shanidar 4 and Shanidar Z were certainly carefully placed, and it is possible that the fragmentary skeletal material found below them was from another placed individual. This is consistent with members of their group(s) feeling empathy.

It has become clear from the work of the Shanidar Cave Project that several bodies in the Shanidar 4 cluster were placed episodically, close to what would have been a major landmark on the cave floor - a very large boulder over 2 m high when the bodies were deposited. The episodic, repeated deposition of Neanderthal bodies within a very confined space, as evidenced by the Shanidar 4 group, seems to be worthy of further consideration and debate," the scientists write in their study.

Some Things Need To Be Resolved

The new study may have answered an number of questions, but scientists suggest there are still things that need to be resolved. "We need to establish why clumps of pollen were only recovered from three samples associated with Neanderthal remains, out of the 21 samples containing pollen analysed from the cave by Leroi-Gourhan. The presence of wood fragments may also be worthy of further consideration, particularly because wood fragments are present within the fill of the body cavity of Shanidar Z," the researchers conclude.

The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science

Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer