The discovery of Neanderthal burials in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, in which large amounts of pollen have been identified, had led archaeologists to attribute sophisticated funeral rituals to prehistoric men. In 1975, an important article suggested that flowers had been placed at the feet of at least one of the deceased found on the spot in the fetal position. New studies are now challenging this idea. Explanations.
Between 1951 and 1960, ten skeletons of Neanderthals (men, women and children), dated to 45,000 years before our era, were found in the cave of Shanidar, north of Erbil, only a few kilometers from the border with the Syria. After four exploration campaigns, one of them caught the attention of American archaeologist Ralph Stefan Solecki (1917-2019), who discovered the site. Analysis of the soil around this body has indeed shown a significant amount of pollen on site.
Until then considered as crude beings, Neanderthals were assigned burial rituals. Subsequently, other discoveries established that they could also express a form of symbolism. The grave, referred to as Shanidar IV, earned the nickname “Flowered Grave” for the occasion. This publication especially promoted this new discipline that was then palynology.
Since then, a new body, dating back to 70,000 BCE, has been found there. This discovery validates the theory that Neanderthal men and women made Shanidar Cave a form of necropolis. But a team of prehistorians, under the direction of Chris O. Hunt, professor of biology at the University of Liverpool, sifted through the hundreds of pollens found.
This observation was enough to dispel the idea that these were bouquets of cut flowers, collected and placed at the time of burial. New data has also shown the presence of modern and ancient bee burrows in the cave. Which rather suggests the fact that these deposits of pollen would result from the activity of these pollinating insects.
“I’m sad to tear down ‘the flower grave theory’ because it’s a great story, which we all wanted to believe, but the facts on the spot force us to see something else,” says Chris O. Hunt , who wanted to pay tribute, in a postscript, to Arlette Leroi-Gourhan. “Reading this article was a revelation for me and meeting this scientist in 1992 made a big impression on me,” he says.
However, the role given to bees is not unanimous. Professor Paul Pettitt, an expert in Neanderthal behavior at the University of Durham (United Kingdom), interviewed by The Guardian, hypothesizes that burrowing rodents – whose remains have been found in the sediments of the cave from Shanidar – may have been the source of the presence of these pollen sacs…
Either way, there is no doubt that Neanderthals buried their dead with care. All the individuals found in the cave, although buried at different periods, spaced out by several years, are arranged in the same position. They have their heads turned towards the east as if to look out of the cave, and have adopted a position reminiscent of that of the fetus in the womb. Professor Hunt’s team specifies that a large rock, placed at the entrance to the cave, must also have signaled the presence of graves on the spot. “Neanderthals left their mark on the landscape,” paleoanthropologist Michelle Langley said in 2013.
Other excavations will surely refine our knowledge of Neanderthal funeral rituals. The pits identified are unfortunately too few and in too poor a state of preservation for researchers to be able to make other assumptions to date. There are currently too few documented cases of objects or materials intentionally left with skeletons to allow us to imagine what Neanderthal man burials might have looked like.
