The Shanidar cave sits in the Zagros mountains of the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq, in a border region between Iran and southeast Türkiye. Within the cave is one of the longest-debated collections of Neanderthal remains.
Researchers at Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of London collaborated to reinvestigate one of the site's most debated findings, the"Flower Burial." Pollen found in a Neanderthal burial has been previously hypothesized to be evidence of a floral grave offering.
This hypothesis had a transformative impact on the understanding of Neanderthals, challenging their previous characterizations as entirely brutish and suggesting they were capable of empathy and care. The burrows of solitary bees can be found in less-trampled areas of the cave floor today. Individual bees can collect multiple floral pollen species as they forage, and their burrows are common to the cave, making them an ideal suspect for the pollen clumps.
As these would have been more noticeable to the original excavation than ancient bee burrows in the dig site, it is perhaps more likely that bees were nesting in the sediments around Shanidar 4 shortly after burial. Researchers still need to clarify or establish why clumps of pollen were only recovered from three samples associated with Neanderthal remains out of the 21 samples containing pollen analyzed from the cave by Leroi-Gourhan. The possibility of other mechanisms, such as small mammals or Neanderthal activities, according to the researchers, cannot be completely ruled out.
Researchers have previously suggested that the fact that Shanidar 1 survived for an extended period with these injuries is indicative of him receiving care and support from other Neanderthal group members. This can be seen as evidence of compassion and cooperation within Neanderthal communities.
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