Where is shanidar cave

Out-competed by the Cro-Magnon, Neanderthals would become extinct. According to Potts, climate change was the instrument of their demise. Around 33, years ago, the Neanderthal, who migrated south from their northernmost range in Central Europe as glaciers advanced, settled in the wooded regions of Iberia present-day Spain and Portugal and Gibraltar.

There, they flourished, possibly until 28, years ago, when they were supplanted by a supremely adaptable competitor—the resilient Cro-Magnon. Your Email required. Your Message. Get Updates from the Kurdish Project. Shanidar 1 The most interesting of all the skeletons, referred to as Shanidar 1, was carefully excavated and diligently studied because of the damage to his skull and deformities on his leg and arm.

This, plus the 'Christian ware' ceramics found there, lent more plausibility to the inference of a Christian settlement at Shanidar before Islam took over.

Shanidar lies in an open valley of comparatively rolling land about 3, feet wide and fifteen miles long. The Greater Zab River in the vicinity of the village of Shanidar is between and yards wide during periods of moderate flow. The river Page 53 is entrenched within rock gorges above and below Shanidar Cave. Further upstream the river opens up into a broad valley which extends up to and a little beyond the village of Zibar. Both sides of the river valley are intersected by the courses of intermittent streams and outlets from springs.

Shanidar and Sapna valley had been scheduled to be covered by the impounded water behind the proposed Bekhme Dam, a high dam which was planned for construction below the junction of the Rowanduz River and the Greater Zab River at its breakthrough from the mountains.

The flood pool was to extend beyond Zibar village to the north-west on the Greater Zab River, and beyond Khalan on the Rowanduz River, to make a long narrow lake nestling in the mountains. Although Shanidar Cave would not have been directly affected it would have made overland access extremely difficult. It would, of course, have covered Zawi Chemi Shanidar and some of the low-lying caves in the district.

This region of Iraq lies in the belt of about twenty inches of annual rainfall, which falls mainly in winter and spring.

Warm maritime air from the Mediterranean Sea swings into the Shanidar valley, controlled by the arc of the Zagros Mountains. This swing appears to conform to the south-east curve of the Zagros-Taurus mountain system, and the isohyets appear to follow the contour lines. Undoubtedly much of the fertility of the steppeland of Mesopotamia is the result of this.

A phenomenon of the Shanidar valley, occurring especially in the fall, is the fogging of the river valley bottom in the early morning. The joining of the two rivers, the Greater Zab River and the Rowanduz River, probably causes this fogging, since the greatest concentration of fog seems to occur at their junction. The police at the Shanidar post said that the Shanidar valley was considerably warmer in the winter than the Mergasur valley to the east, on the other side of Baradost Mountain.

Similarly, the Shanidar valley was warmer than the Zibar valley upstream on the Greater Zab River to the north. It was claimed that when snow fell in the other valley regions, only rain fell at Shanidar. This appears to be true of Zibar, which I had occasion to visit after snowfalls. Shanidar Cave lay above the snowfall Page 54 line, while the rest of the valley lay below it. Continual freezing temperatures set in during the last week of December, and the temperature during July nights was cool enough to warrant bed covering.

During August the temperature rose to such a point that we had to sleep on the roof of the police post, but still with light bed covering. The vegetation of this region is of the mixed woodland mountain type. Trees are more abundant on the borders of rivers and streams, and sparsely distributed elsewhere. The trees grow to about twenty feet. They are closely cropped by the herders, who use billhooks to lop off branches to feed to their goats.

I have seen goats climb up the lower, stronger limbs of trees from the side of the hill wherever they can, and feed on the leaves. This is reminiscent of some of the ancient gold figures depicting goats in trees in the southern plains of Mesopotamia.

Taller and larger trees were reported to grow on the higher slopes of the Berat Dagh, on the opposite side of the Greater Zab River from Shanidar. The predominant tree in the vicinity of the cave was the dwarf oak Quercus aegilops , which is called by the Kurdish-speaking people dar gholu. This tree, which constitutes the type of vegetation known as maqui, is adapted to and lands in the region east of the Mediterranean Sea.

Its fruit is an acorn called balot by the local people. This is an edible nut, better-tasting after treatment. It measures about 1. It may be pared easily with a knife. I have seen the local inhabitants of Shanidar Cave pounding this nut into a mealy substance in a deep stone mortar with another stone.

This meal was then prepared into a tasty dish. Roasted on an open fire, the nut tasted like a chestnut. Like all people living close to the soil, the Kurds are good botanists. They were able to identify and name all of the edible types of roots, tubers, nuts and berries which they collected in season.

There was a kind of thistle called khangier, a spiked plant, which was also said to be edible. In my season at Shanidar the most conspicuous flower was the red anemone, called by the Kurds kurek, or kurek nesan. Hay mentions that this flower occurs in mauve, white and crimson. These included the scarlet and yellow ranunculus, several kinds of iris, the grape hyacinth, hollyhocks in two colours and the poppy.

Up in the higher hills are found acres of narcissi, violets, buttercups, orchids, tulips, roses and tiger lilies. There is hardly a single traveller who does not come away amazed by the widespread covering of flowers. Next to him was another breakfast guest, a rather damp, strange Kurd, a Zubari. He had swum across the Greater Zab River with a cargo of wood and grapes. To float his goods across he had used gourds, while he pushed from behind using his feet as propellers.

The same day, we went to the district seat, Zibar, up the road, in order to inform the officials that we had arrived at Shanidar, as protocol demanded. The country was very beautiful, with tall poplars fringing the river, and mountain-ringed valleys and water everywhere.

Zibaf impressed me as a rather miserable collection of houses. By actual count, there were about fifty houses in the village, at least two tea houses and some six or seven stores on a single dirt main street. The most prominent fixture there with any appearance of solidity was the police post, which seemed to be built on exactly the same plan as our Shanidar fortress. In fact, all of them in this north country seemed to have been cut from the same kind of mould, as if a giant cooky-cutter had been at work.

There was some rubble standing next to this fort, which I was later told belonged to the original Zibar fort. This structure had been destroyed by the cannon of Mulla Mustafa only six years before, in the rebellion. He had taken aim from across the river and blown it up. Behind the fort there was a flat grassed-over space which I was told was an old airfield. Indeed, I could still see whitewashed strip markers in the field, and the remnant of what looked like a large white circle in the centre.

Leban or a watered yogurt, was generally on the platter with plenty of a very fine unleavened wheat bread, which appeared as a large, flat disc, like an enormous tortilla. All was washed down with several glasses of sweetened tea. A meal generally consumed the better part of two hours. I ashamedly learned later that my meals were princely compared with what the ordinary person or farmer had to eat. Towards bedtime I was shown to the police post, which was to be my home at Shanidar on every later occasion.

The police garrison was built in ; at least this legend was scratched in the concrete next to one of the embrasures.

The room I was in was about fifteen feet square, with a ceiling about fifteen feet high. There was a lone window high up in the wall towards the outside, well above the height of a man. On the courtyard side of this Beau Geste-like fortress were a simple wooden door and a window. In the centre of the courtyard were feeding troughs and watering troughs for horses.

The largest room in the place, about forty feet long, was a horse stable, which must have held at least forty animals. The main entry was through a large double doorway of iron, in which a smaller access doorway had been cut for convenience. A guard stationed himself nightly at this doorway with a lantern and a rifle.

An Iraqi flag fluttered bravely above the parapet in front. The floor in my room was of bare concrete. The rough-and-ready furniture consisted of a small unpainted wooden table and a creaky chair. My two foot lockers full of equipment and miscellaneous gear were ranged along one wall. On the other side were my camp cot and sleeping bag. Of course there was no electricity here, and light was furnished by a kerosene lantern.

I took the temperature at 10 Pm, and found that it was 73 degrees F. The next day, 6 October, I had to leave with one of the Kurdish policemen for Erbil to see his little son, who had only two days to live.

A wire had been received during the night, and Corporal Lazar asked me to drive the poor father to the main road. I did this before breakfast. Radio contact was made The First Test Trench at Shanidar Cave Page 61 with the commandant of the district at Mergasuf, just two hours straight over the mountain to the east of us, concerning an escort for me to Shanidar Cave.

The orders came back that I should have three or four police. We all loaded into the jeep, with a Barzani porter to carry my equipment. We took the same path we had taken on the original trip, and I made some observations. It is at an elevation of about 2, feet above sea level. The cave is reached by an ascending footpath from the road about feet below. It takes about forty minutes to make the long climb from the road to the cave, and only about thirty-three minutes back.

I noted some original hay ricks up in the tree boughs. The peasants had cut grass in the fields and had placed it up in the forked branches of trees, well out of reach of the goats, who were practically tree climbers.

The path to the cave rounds the nose of a jutting ridge, and suddenly it comes to view. The cave has a fine southern exposure, with the sun shining into it the greater part of the day.

There is more than ample protection from winter winds. A large bluff protects it on the northern side, matched by another projecting bluff on the south-cast side. The cave lies in Cretaceous dolomitic limestone, probably of the same formation as that of the Baradost Caves identified by Dennis Batten. The colour of the rock is a light grey-brown, which erodes into a reddish-coloured soil. There is a fault zone near the cave, parallel to the axis of the mountain folds.

An intermittent stream flows at the foot of the slope to the west of the cave. The bed of this stream contains stagnant pools in its lower Portion during the summer months. During the rainy season a torrent flows through it. A path follows the upper reaches through a steep valley to Mergasur, the village on the east side of the Baradost Mountain. It takes about two hours to make this journey. A closer supply of water is up the hill some feet by a well-travelled path.

The women of present Page 62 cave-dwellers carry water in goatskin bags on their back, as their forebears had probably done before them at Shanidar. The cave mouth is shaped roughly like a broad triangle. The opening measures 82 feet wide and 26 feet high. Not far from the opening the width increases abruptly towards the interior to an extreme of feet. The ceiling vaults loftily to a jagged crevice about 45 feet from the cave floor. From this point inwards the ceiling falls away rapidly to a height of 25 feet, then gradually slopes to the rear until the end of the cave is met, some feet from the cave mouth.

The slope in front of the cave, with its annually mounting debris, is steep, slanting away to the gully about feet below. The floor of the cave was littered with straw, and much sheep, goat and cattle dung. The whole cave had a dusty aspect, with little pools of dust swirling in the sunshine.

As much as one can see of the ceiling was darkened by soot. Towards the rear of the shelter where the houses were situated black soot hung down from the ceiling in giant threads and cobwebs. I measured a point of the ceiling at 57 feet with my camera range finder. Bird feathers were to be seen everywhere, and swallows darted about throughout the day, whirling and flying here and there and calling to one another.

I spent the greater part of the day in surveying the cave interior. From its floor I collected a number of items, which included two stone pestles and mortars, two broken pottery jars, one worn-out basket and one hand broom of twigs. I proceeded to photograph these items, while the police stood around and watched me in baffled silence. I caught one policeman grinning at another.

The corporal and one of his command went up to the spring for a spot of hunting and water. My Barzani porter also went up the hill somewhere for a drink of water, and returned in an hour. With the help of one of the policemen, I began to survey the interior of the cave, measuring all of the buildings and features of interest I could see.

I made an intensive examination of the debris on the slope in front of the cave, in order to find telltale clues of palaeolithic occupation. The net result was one flint of mottled black colour with translucent grey edges. I showed it to the Barzani, whose face lit up in immediate response. He recognized it as a strike-a-light flint, or what the Kurds call a berdeste. He produced a small piece of wrought iron from somewhere in his waist, and proceeded to strike at the flint, producing sparks.

Returning my flint, he dug deeper into his waistband and his hand came out with his own strike-a-light flint, which looked like a much abused artifact.

This was absolutely new to me, since I had not realized that strike-a-light flints were still in use here. On another occasion one of my workmen showed me how he made fire with his flint and iron. He put a fragment of of punk or pulverized cloth on a piece of flint. The punk was about an inch long. He held the punk on the flint under his thumb, and struck the flint sharply with a stroking motion of the small iron bar.

The punk began to smoulder on the flint immediately after a hot spark had touched it. He blew vigorously on the spark, which lit up and burned a dull red in the punk. I watched him light his cigarette, then pinch the spark out of the punk, to be reused next time. He carried the bar of iron, the flint and the punk inside a little tin somewhere in his waist.

For him this method of lighting was less costly and troublesome than matches or a lighter. We later learned that the cave was partitioned off into ownerships, and that six families had an interest in the cave. The cave was once owned, according to tradition, by Khuder Agha from a village called Korka near Mergasur. The wily Khor Pasha of Rowanduz was supposed to have taken refuge here with his army. The Turks, met him in battle in this area. They blasted into the cave with cannon, and the men of Khor Pasha fought back with flintlock rifles.

Indeed, this was not the last time that the cave had been used as a refuge. Hinting at a more recent cannonade was the discovery of fragments of artillery shells in the excavations. There was some corroboration, for a few chunks of stone had recently become dislodged from the ceiling, as indicated by the bar, white patches in the soot-blackened expanse.

There was a tar deposit about one sixteenth of an inch thick on some of the Page 64 stones. The tar or blackened discolouration had seeped into the cracks on one sample to a depth of about three quarters of an inch. The whole ceiling was covered with a hard shiny substance, which I presumed to be sintef, or limestone percolation. The earth inside the cave was fairly dry and dusty, with at least one major drip spot towards the rear.

Habitation huts, animal stalls and corrals were ranged all around the side of the interior; these I measured and plotted on my chart. The corporal told me that their owners would be coming back to live in these houses in about five days' time.

One of the policemen, observing my interest in the debris around the place, very helpfully collected several more items for me to record. These things included three canes with steam-curved handles made of a special scented wood which was supposed to be a snake repellent; one half of a beef bottle; one iron water tank, undoubtedly of military origin; two wooden paddles; two wooden baskets; two broken loop-handled pottery jars; one bay sickle with a wooden handle; one 'shillelagh' club; one rope hitch of wood; and one hollowed-out knot of wood.

I photographed all of these dutifully, with the policemen amusedly looking on. I also observed a miscellaneous collection of discarded rags and clothing, worn-out slippers, and on the cave slope outside found some broken crockery and several large and small animal-bone fragments. Down in the gully in front of the cave were the jawbones of at least two or three cows.

All this while, swallows and other birds kept darting in and out of the cave, flying through holes to the left of the cave entrance. Corporal Lazar told me that the people of Mergasur, who were returning to live at Shanidar, had no caves in the Mergasur valley.

There were five of six caves in the Shanidar valley which were occupied by the Mergasuf people during the winter months. At the first break of spring they went back to their more open homes. On the return to Shanidar we passed by the small abandoned settlement of Gundi Shkaft, which we had seen from the ledge above it on our first trip to the cave.

One of the people of this village had killed a policeman, and in punishment the village was disbanded. The corporal was especially looking forward to the increase because he wished for a wife badly. His first wife had died, and he had a twelve-year-old daughter. At Corporal Lazar's house I was treated to an evening of song. He sang Barzani songs, holding the palm of his hand to the side of his face, singing in a kind of high-pitched though powerful, resounding voice.

As usual, the corporal had guests. On this occasion they included the radio operator, a local Barzan village boy, and one of the policemen.

Light was provided by the fire and a flickering kerosene lantern. On one Friday, our day of rest, we went on a fish-bombing expedition. We took with us three young boys who had stripped down to their shorts. They carried gourds to swim with. The whole troop went in two jeeploads to a point above the Raizan bridge on the Rukuchuk River at Khor Pasha's ruined bridge. We could see great carp slowly swimming around under the modern iron bridge.

A home-made bomb made of a beer bottle with sand for weight was thrown in among them. Gunpowder was used for the charge, and a cartridge connected with a short fuse was used to set off the charge. The water rose up and bubbled violently. One large carp floated up, its white belly uppermost, dead from the concussion.

One of the boys jumped in and retrieved it. It was a magnificent fish, measuring nearly three feet long. But this method was the only one they seemed to use in catching fish. I never saw a fishing rod or fish weir or net among the Kurds. They seemed to shun fish, and never ate snails, shellfish or turtles, so far as I knew.

I enjoyed the scenic walk to and from the cave. One morning we encountered a goatherd dressed in a felt cloak, the first I had seen worn in the north. His charges jumped around nimbly. Generally throughout the day one heard the long halloo of one person calling to another in the valley, or across from mountain to mountain.

Sometimes there would be a song in the fields. Aside from these evidences of inhabitants I was struck by the general lack of people around Shanidar. It seemed to me that The First Test Trench at Shanidar Cave Page 66 this fertile valley offered the potential to support more inhabitants than there were.

Actually, people drifted back during the next season. There was enmity between the Kurds on our side of the river and those on the opposite side. They belonged to different tribes, and were difficult to bring together in peace. There was a huge white-and-black shaggy dog at Shanidar which was called 'Kazhoo', the name of an agha, or headman, across the river. Such things as this did not make for cordial relations. The different tribes had sometimes waged secret war on each other by such methods as burning wheat crops.

One evening, when I went down from the police post to the village to inquire about hiring more men for my test sounding, I witnessed a strangely haunting scene. On a bluff overlooking the river and facing downstream in the gloom, was a barefoot young girl chanting. She was about twelve years old. She was on her knees, singing to herself in a kind of low plaintive cry.

I asked my companion, Nuri, the radio operator, what she was doing. He was silent for a moment, and then, his face visibly disturbed, whispered that her mother had died about three years ago, and she was still in mourning. There was nothing more to say, and I left.

On 9 October I began excavation with one man, my Barzani porter. He began in the forepart of the cave with a test trench. He had to dig through the hardened crust of cattle, sheep and goat dung, and the dark soil of the recent occupations at Shanidar Cave, raising a lot of dust.

The trench measured about 10 feet long by 2 feet 6 inches wide. The first materials found were three potsherds. During the lunch break I went up the mountain path to see for myself where the springs were.

After just fifteen minutes of winding up a well-beaten path, the police escort and I came to a nest of three pools of water in a copse of blackberry bushes and tall reeds.

My escort said that from here there was no path to the top of the mountain. I noticed some small hoofprints near the spring. These may have been made by ibex. Since I did not see any potsherds on the path to the spring I surmised that the cave inhabitants had used skin bladders or skins of whole sheep or goats as water containers.

This guess was correct, as was borne out later on when the cave people came to live at Shanidar. We left late in the afternoon. On the way down we came upon about a dozen tusked wild boars as big as any I had seen. They rushed headlong up the hill. In the excitement of the chase I grabbed a rifle from one of the policemen and ran after them. But the animals got away too fast. I did not know what I would have done with one if I had shot it.

Presumably the police, who were Christian, would have eaten the flesh, but I cannot be sure, even now. On the following day I augmented the digging crew with four extra hands from Shanidar village.

I put them to work enlarging the test trench. We were somewhat soaked from the intermittent rain which was now falling day and night. The test trench was enlarged to 28 feet in length. Digging in the trench was made difficult by a number of large rocks which must have fallen from the ceiling. We had gone down to 5 feet, finding pottery, cracked bones and similar recent material in the soft dark-brown soil. The workmen were not very energetic. Some would work while others would stand and look on, reversing roles as it pleased them.

I found that they needed a foreman. The tools they had brought to work with were so much junk, and I wondered how they could make much of an impress in the soil. All the shovels had loose handles and were made of a weak kind of sheet metal.

We were progressing slowly in the trench. How Did He Die? Notice the partially healed stab wound on his ninth left rib. The depth of the cut indicates that a sharp instrument stabbed his chest and probably collapsed his lung. This may be evidence of the oldest-known homicide, or attempted homicide, in the fossil record.

Want to learn more about the Neanderthals buried in Shanidar Cave? Explore this video interactive. Want to see a facial reconstruction of Shanidar 1 and learn about ancient DNA? Visit this page. Skip to main content. Full Image. Photograph of the Shanidar 3 skeleton in the cave sediments. It was discovered in in Shanidar Cave, Iraq.