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Long ago,
the plains of East Africa
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were home to our distant ancestors.
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For reasons lost to time,
some of these ancestors
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decided to leave and headed north
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to become the Neanderthals.
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Over time their numbers grew.
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Their territories stretching from Russia
to the Atlantic Coast.
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{\an8}Small clans roaming
across this vast wilderness.
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Surviving against the odds
for over 300,000 years
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until, suddenly,
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they disappeared.
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{\an8}Only in a few places,
have their remains survived,
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and one of the most significant
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is found in the Middle East,
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an archaeological treasure trove
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{\an8}hidden deep in the mountains of Kurdistan,
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{\an8}Shanidar Cave.
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The Shanidar Cave
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is regarded as one
of the most revered caves in the world
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during the time of the Neanderthals
and Homo Sapiens.
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In a place where life
has been ever present,
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we might find answers to questions.
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Questions that are still mysterious.
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Who were the Neanderthals?
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What made them so successful for so long?
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And why, ultimately, did they disappear?
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The Shanidar Cave's
in the foothills of the Bradost Mountains,
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but to call them foothills
doesn't conjure up the right image.
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It feels mountainous.
It's quite jagged and precipitous.
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Shanidar Cave makes an impression
just because of its size and its scale.
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You have to approach from below,
and it's incredibly impressive.
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It's very large.
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It has a very wide mouth,
so it's very light.
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You have the swifts
kind of flying in overhead,
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and eagles circling above,
and wolves howling at night.
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It's an amazing place.
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{\an8}And to actually be the person
who's excavating that as well
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{\an8}is extremely extraordinary.
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Emma is part of a team
of British archaeologists
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invited by their Kurdish colleagues
to continue work in the cave.
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Shanidar Cave is hugely iconic
in the history of Neanderthal studies,
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and played
a really pivotal role in us rethinking
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what we assumed Neanderthals did,
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and what they were like,
and what they were capable of.
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The aim of the new project is to use
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the whole range of archaeological science
now available to us,
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to shed new light on Neanderthal behavior.
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The trench
has not been excavated since the 1960s.
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And since that time,
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the way we think about our closest
human relatives has shifted considerably.
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We still use the word
Neanderthal to describe somebody
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that's kind of oafish, whatever.
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It's still used as a term of abuse
in common parlance,
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"He's a real Neanderthal."
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Archaeologically, they are more
and more similar to Homo Sapiens,
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{\an8}and much of that rethinking owes
its origins to the work
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{\an8}that Ralph Solecki did here
in Shanidar Cave.
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{\an8}Ralph Solecki was born in 1917.
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He died a few years ago at a great age.
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He was incredibly tough.
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He stood on a land mine
in the Second World War,
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and, miraculously, survived.
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He was clearly a very remarkable man.
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It's not clear to me precisely
how he heard of Shanidar,
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{\an8}but he came here, and he worked here
for five seasons between 1951 and 1960.
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He laid out a trench
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that went north-south
covering most of the floor of the cave.
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Why the site became so well-known
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is he found ten Neanderthal men,
women, and children.
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At that time,
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we were young.
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I was approximately...
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seventeen, eighteen years old.
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The doctor taught us.
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Many stones came out of the cave,
large stones.
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They used explosives.
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They found the Neanderthal skeletons.
It was a big deal.
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Their ribs and bones were thick.
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Their head was very large.
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Their hands,
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everything about them was striking.
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This was Solecki's
first major discovery.
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He labelled it Shanidar 1.
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A skeleton from a species
very different to our own.
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They've got
rather more robust features.
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Big brow ridges
and a rather differently shaped skull,
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and we have this very rounded skull.
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They're stocky.
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We assume
they must have some kind of language.
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The more we know about them,
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the more it's clear
that they were much more complicated
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than we thought 40, 50 years ago.
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We call it
the tree of life.
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Each human and each animal
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becomes a branch on that tree of life.
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We are one of the branches,
and the Neanderthals were another.
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Somewhere along the line, we separated.
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I truly feel
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that I am sitting on my cousin's remains.
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At the moment,
we are about 4.5 meters
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from the surface of the cave.
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So this is about 45,000 years ago.
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This is the level at which we have
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the burial or deposition of Shanidar 1.
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He'd had an injury
to the right side of his head.
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But also to the left eye,
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which might well have left him
blind in that eye,
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and might be linked
to some of his other injuries.
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He was also paralyzed
down his right arm,
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and had both broken
his right arm in more than one place,
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but also, it seems,
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that either had the lower part
intentionally or accidentally removed,
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so, basically, had no right arm
from just above the elbow.
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There were also other injuries.
He had quite severe arthritis in his knee.
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Fractures to bones in his foot.
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So perhaps in terms of, say, hunting,
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he might have not been able to hunt
in the typical way,
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but had survived to a relatively old age.
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The implication
of the new find was profound.
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The discovery of Shanidar 1
was potentially a huge shift
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because it did suggest that, perhaps,
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there was this element of caring
and compassion in Neanderthal society.
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Here was evidence
of a severely injured individual
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being supported by their clan.
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And soon,
Solecki unearthed another body
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with an equally remarkable story to tell.
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Shanidar 3 was another adult male,
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and he too, carried injuries,
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including what looked like
a serious wound to his ribs.
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A stark reminder
of the violent side of Neolithic life.
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Remarkably, elsewhere in the cave,
more relics have been found
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that offer a clue to Shanidar 3's fate.
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{\an8}These are some of the artifacts
recovered from Shanidar Cave.
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So, this larger piece is what we call
a "core." Now, a core is a cobble.
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Cobbles are, basically, rounded stones
that could be from the river.
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Neanderthal picked this up
with the intention of taking off pieces,
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either for this to become a tool itself,
or for the pieces that come off,
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which we call "flakes,"
to be used as a tool.
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All readily available in the Zab River,
which is about two miles that way.
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So, I'm attempting
to make something similar to a spearhead.
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What I basically do is
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go along the edge
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and take off smaller pieces.
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By doing that,
I'm essentially sharpening it.
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I've not removed that much,
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but already we can see
that it is quite sharp.
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So a spear point like that,
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has only taken me
about five or six minutes to produce.
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This is a very deadly weapon
used in the right hands,
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and someone who understands
what they're doing,
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and what they're holding.
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One of the interesting things
with Shanidar 3
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is that they had a puncture wound.
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That suggests that this stone tip
to a spear, or whatever it was,
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went in some distance into the rib cage.
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It might well have punctured the lung
and caused a collapsed lung.
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The wound to the ribs
is consistent with a projectile.
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You can imagine
sort of a spear being thrown.
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It could be a hunting accident.
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It could be violence between people.
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But what we can say is
that they did have this wound,
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and that they had survived for some time.
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And so that might suggest
that they had some support
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and help to make it through the injury.
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Though severely injured,
it appears both Shanidar 3 and Shanidar 1
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had been cared for
by the people around them.
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This was a radical new view
of Neanderthal life.
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And elsewhere,
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more evidence of their behavior
had been found in a cave
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far to the northwest of Shanidar.
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Every new evidence,
that you have about Neanderthals,
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is actually showing you
how human they are.
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But their behavior
was different from ours.
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They lived in a completely
different world to our world.
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This is part of the Krapina Collection.
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They are around 130,000 years old,
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and they are the biggest collection
of Neanderthals coming from a single site.
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We are estimating possibly up
to around 80 individual Neanderthals.
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You don't have their whole bodies buried.
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You actually have just fragments
of each of those individuals.
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So that is very unusual.
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On the Krapina bones, both cranial,
so skull bones, and also postcranial,
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you see a lot of, uh,
human-made cut marks.
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What this is is a tibia,
and there is a possibility
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that it was broken on purpose,
that it was smashed.
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You can also see cut marks here
and even some other marks.
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One of the reasons
you would maybe smash a long bone
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is because it's like a container
of bone marrow.
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This is a fibula that has
another interesting kind of marking
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on the surface of the bone.
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They were probably made
when someone was scraping off
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the remaining flesh of the bone
or remaining muscle tissue of the bone.
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As you would do
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when you were just like doing the same
with your chicken bone at your lunch.
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When you hear
they were eating each other,
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you're immediately, like, shocked.
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But it's also the question,
"What kind of cannibalism?"
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What did it mean to them?
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Look at this,
it cuts like a real kitchen knife.
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It's almost effortless.
Yes, so easy.
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Recreating the tools,
the ways to do stuff,
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we are trying to go into the head
of those people,
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and, you know, see the cognitive processes
that go behind.
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So, what is different is
that we're just getting cut marks
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close to the articulation sites.
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And what is weird
in the human remains in Krapina is
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that you are getting it
all along the long bones.
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So as if someone
is actually scraping it continuously.
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Yes.
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I cannot imagine, like,
doing this to someone I actually know.
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So, this is the famous Krapina 3 skull.
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It is the most complete cranial specimen
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in the whole collection,
and it's the only one that has a face.
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This person, we believe, was a female.
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A young Neanderthal in her 20s.
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What is very interesting
is that on the frontal bone,
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you have a series
of something like 40 cut marks.
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There is determination
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to do 40 cut marks
slowly and very close together.
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Even if they were consuming these bones,
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I don't think it was
because they were starving.
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It's actually deeply complex behavior.
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Maybe by consuming the flesh
of the person they knew,
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they want to get some kind of virtue,
something that they admired in this person
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that they shared their lives with.
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In the ethnographic examples
that we know of,
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until recently, people consumed
their loved ones
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because by consuming their flesh,
they're trying to take in something
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that can continue on to other generations,
you know, it's some kind of legacy.
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I cannot say that this was exactly
what was the driving force
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behind this kind
of behavior in Neanderthals,
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but it's another possibility.
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The way Neanderthals
treated their dead
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shows us the complexity of their thinking.
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And nowhere is this better understood
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than in Ralph Solecki's
most famous discovery,
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Shanidar 4, or what became known
as "The Flower Burial."
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Now in this cave,
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we have found nine Neanderthals,
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of which two are most important.
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{\an8}Number 1 found over there,
at the depth of about five meters,
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{\an8}and one here, Shanidar 4,
found at a depth of about seven meters.
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{\an8}Ralph Solecki was one
of the world's great archaeologists.
244
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:57,200
{\an8}There's no doubt at all,
and he was a great storyteller.
245
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:03,840
This seems to indicate, perhaps,
the first signs of spiritual evolution
246
00:24:04,360 --> 00:24:07,280
and maybe the first stirrings of religion.
247
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:22,720
The flower burial was one
of these seminal moments,
248
00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:25,800
{\an8}because it was pretty well
a complete Neanderthal,
249
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:28,360
{\an8}which was an incredible rarity.
250
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:33,520
And it was sampled for pollen,
251
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,800
which at the time,
was quite a radical thing to do.
252
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:41,000
We had found pollen
extracted from the soil,
253
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:42,560
something like this,
254
00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:47,400
and this pollen
indicates the eight types of flowers,
255
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:50,560
which we think
were interred with the individual.
256
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:55,960
He doesn't quite go
as far as saying,
257
00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:57,600
"They conducted a funeral service,"
258
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:00,840
but that's sort of the way
that the prose takes you.
259
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,440
"Someone
in the last ice age
260
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:06,920
{\an8}had ranged the mountains
261
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:09,840
{\an8}in the mournful task
of collecting flowers."
262
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:17,240
The public perception
of the Neanderthals
263
00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:19,480
always was that they lived ugly lives.
264
00:25:19,480 --> 00:25:22,920
They were ugly people.
They had no finer feelings.
265
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:24,840
They had no higher thought.
266
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:32,680
And here were
sensitive caring individuals.
267
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:38,880
And it made every front page,
268
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,760
because here you have
weeping Neanderthals gathering plants,
269
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:47,640
from the hillside around,
to honor their dead.
270
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:01,360
Here were
the first "Flower People,"
271
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:05,880
a discovery wholly unprecedented
in archaeology.
272
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:48,280
In the years
since the discovery of Shanidar 4,
273
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:53,040
the Flower Burial theory
has come under fire.
274
00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:03,240
Somebody who's studying jirds,
275
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:07,440
which are little burrowing mammals,
a little bit like a hamster with a tail,
276
00:27:08,120 --> 00:27:12,720
found that the jirds took
flowers into their burrows to eat them.
277
00:27:16,120 --> 00:27:18,840
So, that was quite
a body blow in many ways,
278
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:23,840
particularly because Solecki had noticed
what appeared to be animal burrows.
279
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:30,560
But the team have
new evidence that suggests
280
00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:33,720
Solecki was partly right after all.
281
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:38,120
This is a landscape which has
things like hyenas and wolves in it,
282
00:27:38,120 --> 00:27:40,840
and leopards, even today.
283
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:42,680
If they just left a body,
284
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:46,040
almost certainly, something
would have come along and eaten it.
285
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:03,480
These are
basically whole individuals
286
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,400
that haven't had that done to them.
287
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,720
In some way, these bodies were protected.
288
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:22,840
My guesstimate is that,
probably, they were taking branches
289
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:29,520
and producing a fairly
unpleasant barrier for wild animals.
290
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:39,240
And bits of that vegetation and pollen
fell into the corpse's rib cage
291
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:40,840
as it became a skeleton.
292
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:49,040
The Solecki story, I think,
is a wonderful story.
293
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:55,560
I think there's enough detail
now in our understanding
294
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,080
to know that it isn't a correct story,
295
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:00,440
by any means.
296
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:15,120
But I think the idea of Neanderthals
caring for their dead,
297
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:17,560
of perhaps protecting them...
298
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,200
actually, that isn't that far,
299
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:28,400
in some ways, from what he said.
300
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:38,680
Ralph Solecki made
his Flower Burial discovery in 1960.
301
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:42,920
He planned to return the following year,
302
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:47,360
but he would never excavate
at Shanidar again.
303
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:58,960
The Kurds are
undisputed masters of the mountains,
304
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,520
where the Iraqi tanks can't reach them.
305
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:07,680
This is not
the United States against Iraq.
306
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:09,800
Boom! There's a hit.
307
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:11,960
It's Iraq
against the world.
308
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:22,320
This is what regime
change looks like.
309
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:26,760
Saddam has gone.
310
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:30,680
Pummeled
by modern weaponry,
311
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:34,640
the cruel caliphate is now surrounded
by these troops.
312
00:30:40,160 --> 00:30:41,920
In the early 2010s,
313
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:46,000
because the situation
had substantially settled down...
314
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:49,400
The Islamic State
is meeting its end.
315
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:53,480
...the Kurdish regional government
approached Professor Graeme Barker
316
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:56,920
to start new excavations at Shanidar Cave.
317
00:30:59,040 --> 00:31:01,760
We weren't expecting to find
any Neanderthal remains,
318
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:05,960
and that wasn't the aim of the project,
it was to, kind of, enhance the work
319
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:07,360
that Solecki had done.
320
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:12,600
So, it came as a huge surprise
321
00:31:12,600 --> 00:31:18,200
when, in 2018, the team discovered
the first Neanderthal skeleton
322
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:22,000
found anywhere
for over a quarter of a century.
323
00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:27,760
The first thing that really came up
was part of the skull,
324
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:32,000
which was incredibly exciting.
It was actually part of the eye socket.
325
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:39,240
And it has
very clear Neanderthal characteristics,
326
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:42,200
in that the brow ridge
in Neanderthals are much heavier.
327
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,640
And directly under that, was the left arm,
328
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:52,840
and the left arm was kind
of folded underneath,
329
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:56,200
sort of across the body,
and tucked under the head.
330
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:01,240
Modern dating placed it
331
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:04,440
amongst the oldest
of Solecki's discoveries.
332
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:16,040
I think we find 75,000 years ago
quite hard to conceptualize.
333
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:19,480
If you think about
what we know about written history
334
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:20,880
can seem like a long time,
335
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:24,640
and that's a drop in the ocean
in terms of the history of our species.
336
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:38,120
When you think what's gone on
in the world in that time period,
337
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,200
Neanderthals have disappeared,
338
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:43,080
modern humans have colonized
the globe for good or ill.
339
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:48,400
Agriculture, cities, urbanism.
European colonialism.
340
00:32:50,680 --> 00:32:53,200
The awfulness
of the 20th century.
341
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:14,560
Throughout all these events,
342
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:18,000
there he has sat...
343
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:26,120
...or she, as flat as a pancake,
344
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:32,480
under a great mass of rocks.
345
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:38,200
And we come along,
against all odds, and find it.
346
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:53,080
It's certainly
a generational find.
347
00:33:53,080 --> 00:33:54,640
Completely out of the blue.
348
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:02,760
The skull itself was very heavily crushed.
349
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:05,880
So, actually, the entire skull
was crushed flat
350
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:08,200
and was probably two,
three centimeters thick.
351
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:14,320
Very fragmented.
352
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:17,160
And very delicate.
353
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:27,080
Even a brush stroke can make things
crumble and almost disappear.
354
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:29,520
So you have to proceed so carefully.
355
00:34:29,520 --> 00:34:30,960
What is that piece?
356
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,280
That's the front of the mandible,
357
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:37,920
and most of the lower teeth,
but not quite all of them.
358
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:41,200
We removed it in small sections
with all of the sediment
359
00:34:41,200 --> 00:34:42,760
to help keep it together.
360
00:34:45,200 --> 00:34:48,240
It is very painstaking,
and that's for good reason.
361
00:34:48,240 --> 00:34:49,680
You get one go.
362
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,240
Archaeology is,
by its very nature, destructive.
363
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:55,440
Once you've excavated it,
364
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:57,560
you can't do it again.
365
00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:06,480
Those little packages
were then all brought back to the UK,
366
00:35:07,240 --> 00:35:09,400
so that we can put them back together.
367
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,240
We have a small team,
but it's a great team.
368
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:31,520
People come from all over the world.
369
00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:37,560
After cleaning
and strengthening the bones,
370
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:39,280
then I had the pieces,
371
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:43,800
and I could start to do the restoration,
which is a big jigsaw.
372
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:51,760
So, the first fragment
is like the easy part.
373
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:56,240
And then it gets more complicated.
374
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:02,720
You need patience,
375
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,760
because you have
a very unique specimen in your hands.
376
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,360
It's a lot of responsibility.
377
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:18,200
If the skull can be reassembled,
378
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:22,960
then the team hope
to reconstruct the face of Shanidar Z.
379
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:29,440
And another part of the skull
contains yet more clues.
380
00:36:31,720 --> 00:36:34,040
Today I've been collecting
the dental calculus
381
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:37,640
that has formed on the teeth
of the Shanidar Z individual.
382
00:36:45,840 --> 00:36:49,760
Dental calculus is
an incrustation on your teeth.
383
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:52,960
{\an8}It's what your dentist goes
to remove once a year.
384
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:57,760
It forms naturally in your mouth,
385
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:02,000
and as it forms, it traps everything
that ends up in your mouth.
386
00:37:03,240 --> 00:37:06,880
So, we're able to get a lot
of information out of this material.
387
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:34,560
There is sort
of this persistent narrative
388
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:38,880
that Neanderthals were high-level hunters,
389
00:37:38,880 --> 00:37:41,840
who ate meat, meat, with meat on the side.
390
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:54,200
It's only been in the last 10
to 20 years that we've come to recognize
391
00:37:54,200 --> 00:37:57,960
that Neanderthals
did actually also consume plants.
392
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:13,320
Knowing how to turn something
that is poisonous when raw
393
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,640
into something
that is nutritious and edible,
394
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,520
it is something
that you have to learn over a lifetime.
395
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:30,800
And if we take
modern foragers as our example,
396
00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:33,480
then the people who specialized
in gathering knowledge
397
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:34,840
were probably women.
398
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:47,200
By reconstructing
what kinds of plants Neanderthals ate,
399
00:38:51,720 --> 00:38:57,360
we might be getting a window
into the role of women in their society.
400
00:39:03,560 --> 00:39:06,600
We'll never know their whole story,
we'll never know their name,
401
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:08,600
their hopes and dreams.
402
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,080
But it's fascinating
to be involved in a project
403
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:20,000
where you're bringing even just
a tiny sliver of their life visible again.
404
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:31,120
And you do wonder, "Who is this person?"
405
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:34,040
"What were they like?
What's their life story?"
406
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:36,000
"How did they come to be here?"
407
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:42,840
I find it very hard to translate
408
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:46,960
from what a skull looks like to what
that person would have looked like.
409
00:39:49,240 --> 00:39:51,240
That's where the remarkable skills
410
00:39:51,240 --> 00:39:53,520
of people
like the Kennis brothers come in.
411
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:08,040
Here we have the skull that Emma,
the data Emma, sent us.
412
00:40:08,040 --> 00:40:11,840
We've got an almost complete skull,
nice complete skull, and it's printed out.
413
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:14,080
- So now we can see him.
- Wow.
414
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:16,560
{\an8}Who are the Kennis brothers?
415
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:20,960
{\an8}The Kennis brothers are two twins
who are fascinated by human evolution.
416
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:22,520
Let's see, look at this nose.
417
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:25,720
It looks a very Neanderthal-like nose,
but what we see is
418
00:40:25,720 --> 00:40:28,480
that the other side of the nose
is very narrow.
419
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:31,080
We reconstruct
ancient extinct humans.
420
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:32,960
We try to show people
421
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:37,400
how maybe the early ancestors
would look like in real life.
422
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:40,480
- Big eyes, tall face, small nose.
- Big eye, yeah.
423
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:46,160
You know, like... spectacles, you know,
these enormous, big spectacles like...
424
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:50,080
If you put the mandible below it,
it looks like... uh...
425
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,000
We were very bad at school.
426
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:53,640
We didn't read much.
427
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:57,360
We went to the library, and we saw
some beautiful pictures of Neanderthals.
428
00:40:59,240 --> 00:41:01,760
We see immediately those worn-down teeth,
mamma mia!
429
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:04,040
Incredible teeth.
Typical Neanderthal.
430
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:07,600
- They use their teeth like a vice. Yeah.
Vice. Like a tool.
431
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:09,040
That, we find fascinating.
432
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:13,560
How a face, an ape face,
could morph into a human face.
433
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:23,560
For us, what's fascinating
about Neanderthals is,
434
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:26,080
they've got an enormous, big nose,
435
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:28,760
an enormous puffy face.
436
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:34,000
Never in human evolution
did you see such a big, strange face.
437
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:36,560
So that's fantastic to see.
438
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:50,120
So, mostly we get skulls.
Mostly the skulls are distorted.
439
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:53,400
We're gonna correct the skulls.
440
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:57,160
We're going to make them
complete with forensic methods.
441
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:07,920
When the skull is complete,
then we apply the tissue thickness,
442
00:42:09,120 --> 00:42:11,080
the muscles on it and the flesh.
443
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:16,840
We fill it up with a kind of skin layer.
444
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:22,160
{\an8}I want to make them human-like,
445
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:25,640
{\an8}not too brutish, human-like,
but not too cliché.
446
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:44,240
Yeah, you can come.
447
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,240
I hope that a lot of people
look at this face
448
00:42:49,240 --> 00:42:52,000
and maybe look at how strange it is.
449
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:56,240
They had such peculiar features.
450
00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:01,120
And that's so striking
because the brain size is same as us.
451
00:43:01,120 --> 00:43:04,360
They are as human as us,
but still there are differences,
452
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:06,840
and that's fascinating,
why are they different?
453
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:12,000
It's such a kind
of parallel evolution with us.
454
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:15,520
All right.
Yeah, all right. Okay.
455
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:18,880
And why did one disappear,
and why is one still alive?
456
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:22,000
That's fascinating. That's the other us.
457
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:32,360
Historically, these "other us"
458
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:36,040
were thought to be
not as smart as our own species.
459
00:43:42,040 --> 00:43:48,680
Only Homo Sapiens are capable
of imagination, creativity, invention.
460
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:03,000
But this prejudice has been shattered
461
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:09,360
by what was found inside a secret
and truly extraordinary French cave.
462
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:26,840
First, we go
into this very narrow space.
463
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:33,200
You have to be really careful
how you enter in it.
464
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:35,560
Push your bag in front of you.
465
00:44:56,400 --> 00:44:58,400
There you enter another world.
466
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,800
It is really unnatural
to go into the caves.
467
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:26,880
These are places that people fear.
468
00:45:35,360 --> 00:45:37,600
And especially
to the very bottom of the caves.
469
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:54,120
{\an8}The cave has been there
for a very long time.
470
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:57,280
A million years, probably.
471
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:01,520
So that's also something that you feel
when you enter there.
472
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:06,240
A kind of environment
that knew already a very long history.
473
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:14,880
When you go a bit further,
you have these nice very calm lakes.
474
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:22,360
The cave is shaped by water
475
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:28,480
dripping in and forming
these very nice stalagmites, stalactites.
476
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:36,240
What's really interesting...
477
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:40,560
you see that
there is really a kind of pattern.
478
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:43,840
These are forming circles.
479
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:58,160
This is not something
you would see in a natural cave.
480
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:08,800
It's very constructed.
481
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:15,920
{\an8}We understood
that there were architectural tricks.
482
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:28,640
Small elements to wedge
the large stalagmites.
483
00:47:31,960 --> 00:47:35,840
All of this is completely structured
and thought out.
484
00:47:46,480 --> 00:47:52,040
For an archaeologist, it's quite unique.
There is no other equivalent to it.
485
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:04,720
In the biggest
circular structure there,
486
00:48:04,720 --> 00:48:09,160
we have really a very nice hearth
made by stalagmites.
487
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,520
Here we have a thermal
alteration, but it's not the only one.
488
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:17,680
We have quite a few...
489
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:20,280
- Here we agree, that's the hearth.
- It's the hearth.
490
00:48:20,280 --> 00:48:21,680
It's the hearth.
491
00:48:24,720 --> 00:48:30,760
So we have several places here
where a fire was present at some point.
492
00:48:33,240 --> 00:48:34,240
Number 38,
493
00:48:34,240 --> 00:48:37,720
along the middle.
494
00:48:37,720 --> 00:48:40,560
It's a bit like
what we'd do when we camp,
495
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:46,000
and we would take wood and make a hearth,
like, in a teepee form,
496
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:47,920
like a point form.
497
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:51,280
This is very exciting
because we can see traces of soot,
498
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:53,440
thermal alterations.
499
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:57,000
There is very black soot,
it's red, it's purple.
500
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:07,760
Obviously, in all traditional
or prehistoric populations,
501
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:10,200
we know that fire has a symbolic value.
502
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:38,360
We find on the ground
very small pieces of burnt wood.
503
00:49:41,040 --> 00:49:44,760
So probably,
they come in the cave with torches.
504
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,400
If you are in the middle of the cave
without light,
505
00:49:53,400 --> 00:49:54,840
it's really dangerous.
506
00:49:56,440 --> 00:49:58,840
So, you need to communicate very well.
507
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:13,840
You need to master very well the fire,
508
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:19,520
the lighting.
509
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:30,760
So, the first idea was
to date these structures.
510
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:46,080
So, these are the cores
of the Bruniquel Cave,
511
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:51,200
and these cores tell us
really the age of these structures.
512
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:57,160
By studying six different cores,
513
00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:02,600
we could come to a very precise age
of 176,500 years,
514
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:06,640
and this was really incredible, in fact.
515
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:14,600
One hundred
seventy-five thousand years ago in Europe,
516
00:51:14,600 --> 00:51:16,360
there were only Neanderthals.
517
00:51:18,080 --> 00:51:22,520
Bruniquel is the oldest construction
in the world that you can see.
518
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:34,360
It's very emotional
when you see these structures,
519
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:38,040
and, especially, when you know
that they are so old.
520
00:51:51,160 --> 00:51:55,120
The recurring question
that keeps coming back is,
521
00:51:55,120 --> 00:51:56,600
"What are the structures for?"
522
00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:23,720
The circle
seems to be the world.
523
00:52:23,720 --> 00:52:28,000
So, you are inside the world,
outside the world, these kind of concepts.
524
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:35,080
With Native Americans,
where you have these circles,
525
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:38,840
people are in connection
with higher spirits.
526
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:51,920
Is it the start of the religion?
527
00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:05,720
This is a crucial question,
but which is really difficult to answer.
528
00:53:20,240 --> 00:53:25,440
So more and more,
we tend to see in Neanderthals
529
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:30,200
a much older humanity,
530
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:38,000
which shares with modern man
more and more things in common.
531
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:54,240
And therefore with Bruniquel,
532
00:53:55,640 --> 00:54:02,640
we increased this relationship
we have with an ancestor who is very old.
533
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:15,920
The enigmatic circles
at Bruniquel are a wonderful part
534
00:54:15,920 --> 00:54:19,920
of the ongoing reappraisal
of Neanderthal culture...
535
00:54:25,720 --> 00:54:28,120
that began at Shanidar,
536
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:31,480
and which continues to this day.
537
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,240
This year,
we found a few isolated bits
538
00:54:48,240 --> 00:54:51,160
of what we think
could be a single skeleton.
539
00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:55,240
We might have found another individual.
540
00:54:57,240 --> 00:54:59,840
There's the left shoulder blades.
541
00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:03,720
There's also a reasonably
complete right hand.
542
00:55:07,720 --> 00:55:10,280
What we've actually found is four fingers,
543
00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:13,080
more or less, in the place
they'd be in the body.
544
00:55:13,080 --> 00:55:15,000
So, what we'd call articulated.
545
00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:19,040
The new remains
are amongst a cluster of bodies
546
00:55:19,040 --> 00:55:23,880
that include
both Shanidar 4 and Shanidar Z.
547
00:55:26,400 --> 00:55:27,720
That's really exciting
548
00:55:27,720 --> 00:55:31,720
because what it is
is evidence of Neanderthals
549
00:55:31,720 --> 00:55:35,400
placing their dead
in this one particular spot.
550
00:55:39,160 --> 00:55:43,640
Are they perhaps coming back
to that same spot on multiple occasions,
551
00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:47,400
which could be decades
or maybe thousands of years apart?
552
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:50,360
So you start to ask,
553
00:55:50,360 --> 00:55:56,400
"Is it just a coincidence, or is this
potentially something intentional?"
554
00:55:57,640 --> 00:56:01,240
And if so, then, why?
And what's bringing them back there?
555
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:15,800
When Shanidar Z was buried,
there was a stone behind the skull.
556
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:22,280
And that is interesting
because it seems rather out of place.
557
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:27,960
And so an idea
we've been thinking about is,
558
00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:30,920
could this be something
that's been put there intentionally?
559
00:56:37,880 --> 00:56:39,800
Another thing that's interesting is that,
560
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:43,200
on the other side of the body,
you've got the big vertical slab.
561
00:56:52,680 --> 00:56:56,080
Clearly, if you've got big vertical
slabs sticking up out of the ground,
562
00:56:56,080 --> 00:56:59,640
there is a possibility that
that could act as some kind of marker.
563
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:07,480
So, it seems that certain individuals
were buried here,
564
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:09,920
and they're coming back
for that very reason,
565
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:14,320
and to this one spot, that's marked
by this very distinctive stone,
566
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:16,480
in what is a very distinctive cave.
567
00:57:24,760 --> 00:57:27,600
It looks more
and more as Ralph Solecki
568
00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:32,640
first found that Shanidar Cave
was a special place for Neanderthals.
569
00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:41,280
They are placing bodies.
570
00:57:41,280 --> 00:57:42,720
They're in a world,
571
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:46,520
in which they are coming back here
regularly and living here.
572
00:57:50,400 --> 00:57:53,120
The cluster of remains
are perhaps evidence
573
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:55,560
of a Neanderthal burial ground,
574
00:57:56,440 --> 00:57:59,560
a discovery with deep implications.
575
00:58:02,080 --> 00:58:05,000
How people treat the dead
576
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:11,120
can give us really important insights
into thinking, imagination, emotion.
577
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,880
It perhaps also reflects
how we think about death itself,
578
00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:22,920
and whether, for example, we believe
that there might be an afterlife.
579
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:32,480
It's part of a rising sense
of the complexity of Neanderthal culture.
580
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:35,240
But they're not here now.
581
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:45,440
The burials are just
the latest traces of Neanderthal behavior
582
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:48,760
preserved inside this remarkable cave.
583
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:59,080
Yet, perhaps, the biggest mystery remains.
584
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:10,920
Why did a form of humanity,
that thrived for 300,000 years, disappear
585
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:14,120
forty-thousand years ago?
586
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:23,480
Perhaps the best place
to search for answers
587
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:26,720
lies on the shores
of the Mediterranean Sea
588
00:59:26,720 --> 00:59:30,520
at one of the final strongholds
of the Neanderthals.
589
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:40,760
Well, we're sitting
on the edge of a cliff.
590
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:45,400
{\an8}Very close to, what a friend called,
Neanderthal City...
591
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:50,920
because it's a whole row of caves
on the waterfront,
592
00:59:50,920 --> 00:59:52,920
on the east side of the Rock of Gibraltar.
593
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:01,200
The Gorham's Cave complex
is a series of caves,
594
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:04,600
and all these caves show
very clear evidence
595
01:00:04,600 --> 01:00:08,600
of Neanderthal presence
and occupation over a long period of time.
596
01:00:18,600 --> 01:00:23,160
We have evidence going back
to at least 125,000 years ago.
597
01:00:28,760 --> 01:00:30,840
The team have unearthed evidence
598
01:00:30,840 --> 01:00:36,680
that Neanderthals were using the caves
as recently as 40,000 years ago.
599
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:46,200
Over the last 100,000 years
of their existence,
600
01:00:46,200 --> 01:00:49,440
the world of the Neanderthals
was constantly changing.
601
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:09,200
The climatic changes were brutal.
602
01:01:09,200 --> 01:01:11,400
They had been earlier ice ages,
603
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:15,120
but the last one, arguably,
was the worst one in terms of impact.
604
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:17,760
The Scandinavian ice sheet
really spread south.
605
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:22,120
France and Central Europe
were little more than steppe-tundra.
606
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:25,240
It really was a very harsh world.
607
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:30,840
The tundra didn't reach this far south,
608
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:33,880
but there were still obvious changes.
609
01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:38,360
When conditions get very cold,
a lot of water is trapped as ice,
610
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:41,440
in ice sheets, in glaciers,
and the sea level drops.
611
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:47,680
When the sea level was lower
than it is today,
612
01:01:47,680 --> 01:01:50,160
that would have exposed a large plain
613
01:01:50,160 --> 01:01:53,200
where all these herbivores
would have been living,
614
01:01:53,200 --> 01:01:55,080
where the birds would have been living,
615
01:01:55,080 --> 01:01:58,240
where there would have been
shallow lakes with fresh water.
616
01:02:01,480 --> 01:02:05,280
They would have known exactly
which species they could consume,
617
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:09,240
where to find them,
and how to best use them.
618
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:14,200
These are just
a very small sample of all the bones,
619
01:02:14,200 --> 01:02:16,720
and all the remains
that we've found in the caves.
620
01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:21,840
We've got tens of thousands of artifacts
that we found in the last 30 years.
621
01:02:24,160 --> 01:02:26,720
They're eating animals
that are not expected,
622
01:02:26,720 --> 01:02:29,320
{\an8}and not normally associated,
with Neanderthals.
623
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:35,880
We have evidence that they were going down
to the rocky shoreline
624
01:02:35,880 --> 01:02:37,280
and picking limpets.
625
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:39,640
And, in fact, I've got a limpet here,
626
01:02:39,640 --> 01:02:44,120
which has still got a flint tool
stuck on to it.
627
01:02:44,120 --> 01:02:46,920
So, it's where the Neanderthal left it.
628
01:02:49,440 --> 01:02:54,040
But then we get this particular bone,
which comes from a common dolphin,
629
01:02:55,200 --> 01:02:57,000
and it's got cut marks on it.
630
01:02:58,760 --> 01:03:03,280
Maybe the dolphin was dead already
on the shore, but they defleshed it.
631
01:03:03,920 --> 01:03:05,840
They removed the flesh to consume it.
632
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:15,160
The Neanderthals thrived in Europe
for longer than we have been around.
633
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:16,200
That's for sure.
634
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:26,760
To me, that says that they're intelligent,
635
01:03:26,760 --> 01:03:29,080
and that they understand
their environment.
636
01:03:34,240 --> 01:03:36,920
In that sense,
they were extremely successful.
637
01:03:42,840 --> 01:03:46,720
The Neanderthals were human.
They were resilient.
638
01:03:46,720 --> 01:03:48,520
They were very much like us.
639
01:03:49,160 --> 01:03:51,720
But, one day, it all came to an end.
640
01:03:55,120 --> 01:03:58,040
Which deepens the mystery
of their disappearance.
641
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:04,360
After all, if the Gibraltar Neanderthals
were so resilient for so long,
642
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:06,800
what on earth went wrong?
643
01:04:07,680 --> 01:04:11,960
People associate the Ice Age
with getting cold, which of course it did,
644
01:04:11,960 --> 01:04:13,880
but it also got dryer.
645
01:04:15,520 --> 01:04:18,880
The change that hit
these Neanderthals in Gibraltar,
646
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:24,720
in my view, was one
of a world of trees disappearing.
647
01:04:30,040 --> 01:04:32,200
You have trees,
and why are those significant?
648
01:04:32,200 --> 01:04:36,280
Because they allow you
to ambush hunt large prey.
649
01:04:41,320 --> 01:04:44,280
Through time, their whole physique
650
01:04:44,280 --> 01:04:48,360
had become that
of a wrestler-type build, if you like,
651
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:51,680
capable of jumping on top
of these animals with spears,
652
01:04:51,680 --> 01:04:54,320
thrusting spears
and killing those animals.
653
01:04:58,760 --> 01:05:02,040
Suddenly, that world becomes
an open landscape.
654
01:05:02,040 --> 01:05:05,600
The animals see you coming
a mile away. You can't get near them.
655
01:05:10,160 --> 01:05:11,720
When the change came,
656
01:05:11,720 --> 01:05:15,240
it was so rapid that their biology
couldn't change at that speed.
657
01:05:29,680 --> 01:05:31,320
And that's what hit them.
658
01:05:42,320 --> 01:05:45,760
We think that we are
the pinnacle of evolution,
659
01:05:45,760 --> 01:05:48,160
that's the way
we've always painted ourselves.
660
01:05:48,160 --> 01:05:51,520
Even with respect to the Neanderthals,
we're here, and they're not,
661
01:05:51,520 --> 01:05:54,200
because we were better than they were. Um...
662
01:05:54,200 --> 01:06:00,840
But you can be very highly adapted,
you can do very well on a planet,
663
01:06:00,840 --> 01:06:03,520
like, we'd argue,
perhaps we're doing today.
664
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:08,200
And yet, the story tells us
that there are other ways of being human,
665
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:10,960
and those ways can sometimes fail.
666
01:06:15,840 --> 01:06:18,440
We might think we're doing
very well on this planet,
667
01:06:18,440 --> 01:06:19,640
but just be aware.
668
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:32,360
By around 40,000 years ago,
Neanderthal numbers were in free fall.
669
01:06:33,280 --> 01:06:38,560
Not just in Gibraltar,
but across their entire world.
670
01:06:42,520 --> 01:06:45,800
Climate change
was a factor in their decline.
671
01:06:48,560 --> 01:06:54,520
But so too, was increasing competition
from another species.
672
01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:05,360
To this day, all of us carry
a tiny bit of Neanderthal DNA.
673
01:07:09,320 --> 01:07:12,760
A legacy of our long-lost ancestors.
674
01:07:16,840 --> 01:07:21,280
For at least 100,000 years,
waves of Homo Sapiens
675
01:07:21,280 --> 01:07:25,760
had spread from Africa
into Europe and Asia,
676
01:07:29,360 --> 01:07:32,880
encountering Neanderthals
as they traveled.
677
01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:06,640
Some of these encounters
may have been violent.
678
01:08:44,680 --> 01:08:49,680
But some, presumably,
were more peaceful.
679
01:08:54,080 --> 01:08:59,160
One group of people recognizing
the humanity of the other.
680
01:09:08,840 --> 01:09:10,960
The path of these epic journeys
681
01:09:10,960 --> 01:09:14,520
would have taken
Homo Sapiens through the Middle East.
682
01:09:17,480 --> 01:09:23,880
Close to the ancestral burial ground
of the Shanidar Neanderthals.
683
01:09:38,520 --> 01:09:42,920
Neanderthal genes
are present inside many Homo Sapiens.
684
01:09:46,240 --> 01:09:51,160
And I do really believe
that we are cousins.
685
01:09:51,160 --> 01:09:53,920
We are of the same blood.
686
01:09:53,920 --> 01:09:56,080
We have the same ancestors.
687
01:10:04,800 --> 01:10:07,840
One of the things that I find
so fascinating about archaeology
688
01:10:07,840 --> 01:10:10,440
is that diversity of ways of being human.
689
01:10:12,600 --> 01:10:16,200
Looking at how people's skeletons are,
690
01:10:16,200 --> 01:10:20,000
can tell us about their lives
and their experience of the world.
691
01:10:22,920 --> 01:10:26,160
While excavating Shanidar Z,
we could see certain characteristics
692
01:10:26,160 --> 01:10:28,800
that suggested that they're an adult,
693
01:10:28,800 --> 01:10:32,160
but we didn't know
how old they were when they died,
694
01:10:32,160 --> 01:10:34,440
we didn't know
whether they were male or female,
695
01:10:34,440 --> 01:10:37,600
and we didn't know
a great deal either about their life.
696
01:10:40,680 --> 01:10:44,720
So a lot of those kinds of questions
of what we are working on answering now.
697
01:10:46,400 --> 01:10:51,200
What we've got here is the left radius.
So, this is one of the forearm bones.
698
01:10:52,480 --> 01:10:56,040
We can tell already that this was
a relatively small individual,
699
01:10:56,640 --> 01:11:02,400
between about one and a half,
or 1.55 meter to 1.60 meter tall.
700
01:11:03,360 --> 01:11:05,920
That's just over five foot essentially.
701
01:11:08,400 --> 01:11:12,640
Here we've got part of the lower jaw,
the mandible, with some of the teeth.
702
01:11:12,640 --> 01:11:15,960
An important thing to notice,
is that actually many of these teeth,
703
01:11:15,960 --> 01:11:19,760
especially the front teeth here,
are all extremely worn down.
704
01:11:20,760 --> 01:11:21,840
That's the enamel,
705
01:11:22,360 --> 01:11:25,760
that's completely worn off,
all of these teeth.
706
01:11:27,040 --> 01:11:30,640
Certainly, we know that
for a Neanderthal with teeth this worn,
707
01:11:30,640 --> 01:11:32,600
they had to be an older individual,
708
01:11:33,400 --> 01:11:36,480
probably somewhere
between about 40 and 50.
709
01:11:42,280 --> 01:11:46,280
There are ways that we can tell the sex
of the individual from the skeleton.
710
01:11:47,720 --> 01:11:50,880
What we did was use a technique
called proteomics,
711
01:11:50,880 --> 01:11:53,440
which is where you analyze
some of the proteins
712
01:11:53,440 --> 01:11:55,040
in the enamel of the tooth,
713
01:11:55,040 --> 01:11:59,400
because we know that there's
a particular protein that's produced,
714
01:11:59,400 --> 01:12:01,320
while that enamel's forming,
715
01:12:01,320 --> 01:12:05,560
that has a different version
that's encoded by
716
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:08,720
what's on the X chromosome
compared to what's on the Y chromosome.
717
01:12:11,200 --> 01:12:15,360
So, that indicates very strongly to us
that this is a female individual.
718
01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:25,760
Quite often,
we think of Neanderthals as males,
719
01:12:25,760 --> 01:12:30,560
or we tend to focus on aspects
of male behavior.
720
01:12:32,800 --> 01:12:37,120
This is a really exciting opportunity
to understand Neanderthal society
721
01:12:37,120 --> 01:12:38,440
more completely.
722
01:12:45,120 --> 01:12:47,840
I think to have an actual reconstruction
723
01:12:47,840 --> 01:12:52,440
of what this Neanderthal woman
might have looked like
724
01:12:52,440 --> 01:12:55,280
during life will be incredibly exciting.
725
01:12:57,040 --> 01:13:00,520
- Well, Doctor Pomeroy.
- Let's find out.
726
01:13:01,920 --> 01:13:04,240
- We have one already prepared.
- Hmm.
727
01:13:04,880 --> 01:13:05,720
Yep.
728
01:13:13,440 --> 01:13:14,760
I'm gonna start from this.
729
01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:23,320
Oh, wow.
Wow.
730
01:13:26,600 --> 01:13:28,200
- Well.
Well.
731
01:13:28,200 --> 01:13:31,880
Amazing, we should turn
her round, so that everyone else can see.
732
01:13:33,040 --> 01:13:34,680
Wow.
733
01:13:36,440 --> 01:13:37,600
She's looking at me.
734
01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:42,040
Yeah, she is. You've probably spent
the most time with her, so...
735
01:13:42,040 --> 01:13:44,720
- Also, you remember the nose and...
- Yeah.
736
01:13:45,560 --> 01:13:47,080
- It's amazing.
Yeah.
737
01:13:47,080 --> 01:13:49,560
It's interesting
how they've done her expression,
738
01:13:49,560 --> 01:13:52,360
I mean the emotions
that are wrapped into it.
739
01:13:52,360 --> 01:13:56,000
I think that's the beauty
of these kinds of reconstructions,
740
01:13:56,000 --> 01:13:59,600
is that some people are somewhat critical,
741
01:13:59,600 --> 01:14:02,200
and say, "We can never know
what people looked like."
742
01:14:02,200 --> 01:14:05,960
There's various assumptions
we have to make, and that's very true,
743
01:14:05,960 --> 01:14:12,240
but... I think it does give you
a sense of her as a person.
744
01:14:12,240 --> 01:14:13,280
Hmm.
745
01:14:17,840 --> 01:14:21,560
She gets to the heart,
doesn't she, of what it means to be human.
746
01:14:21,560 --> 01:14:24,760
What it might have meant
to be human Neanderthal.
747
01:14:24,760 --> 01:14:27,080
Somehow, you do get something of the...
748
01:14:27,840 --> 01:14:31,120
I don't know,
of a deep life history to this person.
749
01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:44,120
It's the older people,
with their knowledge, their experience,
750
01:14:44,960 --> 01:14:48,440
{\an8}who would have known
where the good places were.
751
01:14:51,880 --> 01:14:55,080
That memory, whether it was
only within her head,
752
01:14:55,080 --> 01:14:58,080
or whether it was something
that was in her head,
753
01:14:58,080 --> 01:15:01,280
that she was sharing
through songs and stories
754
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:03,840
with children and grandchildren,
755
01:15:03,840 --> 01:15:06,680
would have been
absolutely vital to the group.
756
01:15:08,280 --> 01:15:14,280
In many ways, that was the beginning
of civilization in a much more real sense
757
01:15:14,280 --> 01:15:16,800
than the first time
somebody built a building,
758
01:15:16,800 --> 01:15:18,200
or anything like that.
759
01:15:23,440 --> 01:15:27,520
She likely had that, kind of,
role of a repository of knowledge
760
01:15:27,520 --> 01:15:31,680
and had a major role in passing on
that knowledge to the next generation.
761
01:15:31,680 --> 01:15:35,600
And here we are, 75,000 years later,
762
01:15:36,880 --> 01:15:39,680
learning from her, still.
763
01:15:55,320 --> 01:15:59,560
Shanidar Cave has taught us
a huge amount about Neanderthals,
764
01:16:00,240 --> 01:16:02,040
and it still is teaching us.
765
01:16:07,160 --> 01:16:11,800
But also, it's made us reflect on
what does it mean to be human?
766
01:16:15,960 --> 01:16:19,320
Things like, having compassion
for one another.
767
01:16:22,400 --> 01:16:24,400
How we deal with death.
768
01:16:27,280 --> 01:16:30,280
And what's inevitably going to happen
to all of us.
769
01:16:38,720 --> 01:16:41,280
Right now,
we're getting a snapshot,
770
01:16:41,280 --> 01:16:43,920
and it's amazing and rich,
771
01:16:43,920 --> 01:16:46,120
but we certainly don't have
the whole picture,
772
01:16:46,120 --> 01:16:49,400
and there's much more there
to be discovered
773
01:16:52,240 --> 01:16:56,960
about what we understand
"being human" and "humanity" to be.