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Archaeologists unveil face of Neanderthal woman 75,000 years after she died: “High stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle”
A British team of archaeologists on Thursday revealed the reconstructed face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman, as researchers reappraise the perception of the species as brutish and unsophisticated.
Named Shanidar Z after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where her skull was found in 2018, the latest discovery has led experts to probe the mystery of the forty-something Neanderthal woman laid to rest in a sleeping position beneath a huge vertical stone marker.
The lower part of her skeleton is believed to have been excavated in 1960 during groundbreaking excavations by American archaeologist Ralph Solecki in which he found the remains of at least 10 Neanderthals.
“I think she can help us connect with who they were,” said Dr. Emma Pomeroy, a palaeo-anthropologist on the project from the University of Cambridge.
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“It’s extremely exciting and a massive privilege actually to be able to work with the remains of any individual but especially one as special as her,” she told BBC News.
Solecki’s discovery of a cluster of bodies with one surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen led him to controversially argue that this was evidence of funerary rituals with the dead placed on a bed of flowers.
Political difficulties meant it took around five decades for a team from Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores universities to be allowed back to the site in the Zagros mountains of northern Iraq.
“Skull was as flat as a pizza”
The last Neanderthals mysteriously died out around 40,000 years ago, just a few thousand years after humans arrived.
Shanidar Z’s skull — thought to be the best preserved Neanderthal find this century — had been flattened to a thickness of 0.7 inches, possibly by a rockfall relatively soon after she died.
Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, told the BBC the “skull was as flat as a pizza, basically.”
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“It’s a remarkable journey to go from that to what you see now,” Barker said. “As an archaeologist, you can sometimes get blasé about what you’re doing. But every now and then you are brought up short by the fact you are touching the past. We forget just what an extraordinary thing it is.”
Shanidar Z is the fifth body to be identified in the cluster buried over a period of at least several hundred years right behind the rock in the center of the cave.
Archaeologists believe the stone was used as an identifier to allow itinerant Neanderthals to return to the same spot to bury their dead.
Latest research by team member Professor Chris Hunt of John Moores now suggests the pollen that gave rise to Solecki’s contentious “flower burial” theory might in fact have come from bees burrowing into the cave floor.
But Hunt said there was still evidence — such as the remains of a partially paralyzed Neanderthal found by Solecki — that the species were more empathetic than previously thought.
“There’s been this huge reappraisal which was actually started by Ralph Solecki in this cave with ‘Shanidar 1’ with his withered arm and his arthritis and his deafness who must have been looked after. That tells us there was compassion,” he said.
The positioning of the bodies in the cluster in the same spot, in the same position and facing in the same direction implied “tradition” and the “passing of knowledge between generations,” he said.
“Exciting” and “terrifying” discovery
“It looks much more like purposeful behavior that you wouldn’t associate with the text book stories about Neanderthals which is that their lives were nasty, brutish and short,” he added.
Pomeroy, the Cambridge palaeo-anthropologist who uncovered Shanidar Z, said finding her skull and upper body had been both “exciting” and “terrifying.”
The skeleton and the surrounding sediment had to be strengthened in situ with a glue-like consolidant before being removed in dozens of small foil-wrapped blocks.
Lead conservator Lucia Lopez-Polin then pieced together the over 200 bits of skull as the first step in the facial reconstruction for the just-released Netflix documentary “Secrets of the Neanderthals.”
Pomeroy said the task had been like a “high stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle” especially as the fragments were very soft “similar in consistency to a biscuit dunked in tea”.
The rebuilt skull was then 3D-printed allowing palaeo-artists and identical twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis in The Netherlands to complete the reconstruction with layers of fabricated muscle and skin for the documentary, which was produced by the BBC Studios Science Unit.
Pomeroy said Neanderthal skulls looked very different to those of humans “with huge brow ridges and lack of chins.”
But she said the recreated face “suggests those differences were not so stark in life,” highlighting the interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans “to the extent that almost everyone alive today still has Neanderthal DNA.”
The BBC reported that the researchers are confident the Neanderthal is a female. Because no pelvic bones were recovered, archaeologists relied on certain dominant proteins found in the tooth enamel that are associated with female genetics. The slight stature of the skeleton also supports the interpretation.
The Biden administration on Thursday announced an effort to shorten the time it takes for U.S. immigration judges to decide the asylum cases of certain migrants who enter the country illegally along the border with Mexico.
Migrant adults released by federal border officials after crossing into the U.S. unlawfully will be eligible to be placed in the program, under a joint initiative between the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, which oversees the nation’s immigration courts.
The effort’s objective, senior U.S. officials said, is to speed up the process of granting asylum to migrants with legitimate cases, and rejecting weak cases. Federal officials under Republican and Democratic administrations have said the current years-long timeframe to decide asylum cases serves as a “pull factor” that attracts migration by economic migrants, who don’t qualify for humanitarian protection, but who often use the asylum system to work in the U.S.
Over the past years, the backlog of cases received by the immigration courts has ballooned, leading to wait times that often surpass four years. Fewer than 800 immigration judges are overseeing more than 3.5 million unresolved cases.
Single migrant adults who plan to live in five major U.S. cities — Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City — could be selected for the new process, which will instruct immigration judges to issue decisions within 180 days, instead of years.
Since the Obama administration, the U.S. has set up several similar programs, colloquially known as “rocket dockets.” While officials have portrayed them as ways to discourage illegal immigration, advocates have said the rocket dockets trample on migrants’ due process by making it more difficult for them to secure lawyers in time for their hearings.
The scope of Thursday’s announcement was not immediately clear, as U.S. officials declined to provide an estimate of the number of migrants who would be placed in the fast-track proceedings. Ten judges have been assigned to the program, one of the officials said during a call with reporters.
The latest rocket docket is the most recent step taken by the Biden administration to curtail unlawful border crossings, which spiked last year to record levels. Last week, the Biden administration published a proposed rule that would allow immigration officials to more quickly reject and deport asylum-seeking migrants who are deemed to endanger public safety or national security.
Last year, the administration implemented a regulation that presumes migrants are ineligible for U.S. asylum if they enter the country illegally after failing to request refuge in another country. It paired that policy with a vast expansion of avenues for some would-be migrants to enter the U.S. legally.
President Biden, who has increasingly embraced more restrictive border policies, has also been considering a more sweeping measure that would further restrict asylum for those entering the U.S. illegally. The move, which would rely on a presidential authority known as 212(f), would almost certainly face legal challenges.
Administration officials have argued they are exploring unilateral immigration actions due to the collapse of a border security agreement that the White House forged with a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year. While the deal would have severely restricted asylum and increased deportations without legalizing unauthorized immigrants, most Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, rejected it outright.
“This administrative step is no substitute for the sweeping and much-needed changes that the bipartisan Senate bill would deliver, but in the absence of congressional action we will do what we can to most effectively enforce the law and discourage irregular migration,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement Thursday.
The Biden administration has faced unprecedented levels of migration along the southern border, including over two million migrant apprehensions in each of the past two years.
HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images
In recent months, however, migrant crossings have plunged, bucking historical patterns that have seen migration soar in the spring. Last month, Border Patrol recorded nearly 129,000 migrant apprehensions, down from 137,000 in March, according to government data. U.S. officials have credited increased deportations and an immigration crackdown by Mexico for the surprising drop.
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When he gives the commencement address at Morehouse College, President Biden will have his most direct engagement with college students since the start of the Israel-Hamas war at a center of Black politics and culture.
Morehouse is located in Atlanta, the largest city in the swing state of Georgia, which Biden flipped from then-President Donald Trump four years ago. Biden’s speech Sunday will come as the Democrat tries to make inroads with a key and symbolic constituency — young Black men — and repair the diverse coalition that elected him to the White House.
The announcement of the speech last month triggered peaceful protests and calls for the college administration to cancel over Mr. Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. Some students at Morehouse and other historically Black campuses in Atlanta say they vociferously oppose Mr. Biden and the decision to have him speak, mirroring the tension Biden faces in many communities of color and with young voters nationally.
Fences started going up Thursday around the campus as concern built over possible protests.
Morehouse President David Thomas earlier this week warned he would halt graduation ceremonies if demonstrations erupt.
“If my choice is 20 people being arrested on national TV on the Morehouse campus, taken away in zip ties during our commencement, before we would reach that point, I would conclude the ceremony,” Thomas told NPR.
For weeks, some students and faculty have challenged leaders of the historically Black college to rescind Mr. Biden’s invitation over his administration’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.
“We feel that all of his decisions do not reflect the moral compass of ourselves as students of this institution, and largely of the Black American population,” Morehouse sophomore Anwar Karim told CBS News.
Last week, the White House dispatched senior Biden adviser Stephen Benjamin to meet with students on campus.
“I think as long as they’re peaceful protests that don’t disrupt the amazing moment that is for each of those graduates there today, I think we’ll all consider this a success,” Benjamin said during a White House briefing.
Fabin Nwaduba, an engineering graduate, told CBS News, “This is one of the happiest days of my life. If they (protesters) come over and ruin it, I’m going to be hurt.”
Thomas said in an interview with The Associated Press that the emotions around the speech made it all the more important that Mr. Biden speak.
“In many ways, these are the moments Morehouse was born for,” he said. “We need someplace in this country that can hold the tensions that threaten to divide us. If Morehouse can’t hold those tensions, then no place can.”
The president’s visit comes at a critical time in the battleground state. While Mr. Biden flipped Georgia in 2020, if the election were held today, a recent New York Times/Siena poll showed him losing to Trump by 10 points, as both candidates try to shore up support with Black voters.
Sunday’s speech will culminate a four-day span during which Mr. Biden will concentrate on reaching Black communities. On Thursday, Mr. Biden met privately with plaintiffs from the Brown v. Board of Education case that barred legal segregation of America’s public schools. The following day, Mr. Biden will address an NAACP gathering commemorating the 70th anniversary of the landmark decision.
Many younger Black people have identified with the Palestinian cause and have at times drawn parallels between Israeli rule of the Palestinian territories and South Africa’s now-defunct apartheid system and abolished Jim Crow laws in the U.S. Israel rejects claims that its system of laws for Palestinians constitutes apartheid.
“I think that the president will do himself good if he does not duck that, especially when you think about the audience that he will be speaking to directly and to the nation,” Thomas told the AP.
Blowback at Morehouse started even before Thomas publicly announced Mr. Biden was coming. Faculty sent executives a letter of concern, prompting an online town hall. Alumni gathered several hundred signatures to urge that Thomas rescind Mr. Biden’s invitation. The petition called the invitation antithetical to the pacifism Martin Luther King Jr., a Morehouse alumnus, expressed when opposing the Vietnam War.
Some students note that leaders of Morehouse and other HBCUs did not always support King and other Civil Rights activists who are venerated today. Morehouse, for instance, expelled the actor Samuel L. Jackson in 1969 after he and other students held Morehouse trustees, including King’s father, in a campus building as part of demanding curriculum changes and the appointment of more Black trustees.
Students organized two recent protests across the Atlanta University Center, a consortium of historically Black institutions in Atlanta that includes Morehouse.
“Our institution is supporting genocide, and we turn a blind eye,” said Nyla Broddie, a student at Spelman College, which is part of the AUC. Brodie argued Mr. Biden’s Israel policy should be viewed in the broader context of U.S. foreign policy and domestic police violence against Black Americans.
Thomas told the AP he “feels very positive about graduation” and that “not one” Morehouse senior — there are about 500 at the all-male private school — has opted out of participating.
“That’s not to say that the sentiments about what’s going on in Gaza don’t resonate with people in our community,” Thomas said.
Thomas met privately with students as did several trustees. The Morehouse Alumni Association hosted a student town hall, featuring at least one veteran of the Atlanta Student Movement, a Civil Rights-era organization.
But there was a consistent message: Uninviting the president of the United States was not an option. When students raised questions about endowment investments in Israel and U.S. defense contractors, they said they were told the relevant amounts are negligible, a few hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds.
HBCUs have not seen the crackdowns on protests from law enforcement like those at Columbia University in New York City and the University of California, Los Angeles. However, Morehouse and the AUC have seen peaceful demonstrations, petitions and private meetings among campus stakeholders. Xavier University, a historically Black university in Louisiana, withdrew its commencement invitation for U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, citing a desire among students “to enjoy a commencement ceremony free of disruptions.”
