Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Violent Death But Also Care And Compassion in Neanderthal Society

Neanderthal scapula with spear hole.

View of Shanidar Cave from approximately the south.

Photo: G. Barker.

Fatal Neanderthal wound may be earliest evidence of a wooden spear attack on a human ancestor | University of Cambridge

Some 75,000 years ago, a Neanderthal in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan survived a devastating facial injury, apparently with help from others, only to suffer a probably fatal penetrating wound later in life. The remains preserve a striking combination of vulnerability, probable compassion and possible interpersonal violence: recognisably human behaviour from a time tens of thousands of years before the biblical creation story places the beginning of human history.

The individual, designated Shanidar A, is described in a new paper in Scientific Reports. Researchers led by Dr Emma Pomeroy identified a roughly circular, 15-millimetre-wide perforation in the left shoulder blade, consistent with a sharpened wooden spear entering through the chest and passing through the body. The injury occurred around the time of death and was probably lethal. Its position and the force required suggest a deliberate attack, although a hunting accident remains a possibility. The evidence supports a violent death; it does not supply the identity or intentions of whoever held the spear.

Earlier in life, Shanidar A had suffered a severe blow to the mouth, splitting a lower incisor lengthways. Subsequent wear and the accumulation of dental calculus show that the individual survived the injury for a considerable period. Given the likely pain and difficulty eating, the researchers suggest that survival involved care from companions. This is not a fossilised moral code, nor proof that Neanderthals thought exactly as we do. It is, however, evidence consistent with practical compassion in an extinct human lineage closely related to our own. The capacity to help an injured companion evidently has a much deeper history than the religious traditions that now claim ownership of morality.

For young-Earth creationism, the chronology is already fatal: these events occurred around 69,000 years before the supposed creation of the Universe in the familiar six-thousand-year chronology. The archaeological context adds another difficulty. Fragile remains survived within a cave sequence that researchers can investigate in detail, including evidence that a local flash flood disturbed the bones after decomposition. That is evidence of a particular event in a particular landscape, not of a recent worldwide deluge. Any attempt to impose the biblical catastrophe on this record must explain the actual sequence of deposition, decay, disturbance and preservation, rather than treating every mention of flooding as confirmation of Genesis.

Shanidar A therefore offers more than another inconveniently ancient fossil. Here is evidence that the mixture of care and violence we recognise in ourselves was already present, or at least emerging in familiar forms, among our evolutionary relatives. Science approaches that evidence by distinguishing what the bones demonstrate from what they merely suggest. Biblical literalism starts with a predetermined story and must somehow accommodate a human past far older, more varied and more revealing than its authors ever imagined.

Care Before Written Codes^ What Injured Neanderthals Can Tell Us. Bones and teeth cannot tell us what their owners believed about right and wrong. They can, however, preserve evidence that someone survived a serious injury — sometimes under circumstances in which help from others would have made survival considerably more likely. This allows researchers to investigate the deep evolutionary roots of care without assuming that ancient people shared our moral rules or religious beliefs.

How can we tell that someone survived an injury?

Bone can remodel and heal during life, leaving evidence that an injury was not immediately fatal. Teeth provide different clues: a broken tooth does not heal like a bone, but wear on the damaged surface and the accumulation of dental calculus can show that it remained in use after the injury. These changes help distinguish an old injury from damage sustained around death or after burial.

In Shanidar A, a lower incisor had been split lengthways by what researchers interpret as severe facial trauma. Subsequent wear and calculus deposits indicate survival for a substantial period. The Cambridge team suggests that the individual lived for at least a year after the injury, despite the likely pain and difficulty eating.

When does survival suggest care?

The inference depends on how an injury would have affected everyday activities. Someone unable to obtain or chew their usual food might benefit from companions bringing food, preparing softer meals or providing protection during recovery. Such assistance need not have resembled modern nursing to have been important.

Shanidar A is not the only suggestive example from the cave. Another individual, Shanidar 1, survived with multiple impairments, including a severely damaged upper limb and evidence interpreted as impaired hearing and vision. The combination of substantial disability and prolonged survival has contributed to the argument that Neanderthal groups supported vulnerable members.

What are the limits of the evidence?

Survival is not automatic proof of care. Injured individuals can be resourceful, and the effects of an impairment are not always easy to reconstruct. Researchers must consider the severity of the condition, the demands of the environment and plausible ways of coping independently. Even where assistance is likely, the remains cannot establish whether its motivation was affection, reciprocity, obligation or some combination of these.

What does this tell us about morality?

Care for injured companions is relevant to the evolutionary history of social behaviour, but it is not evidence for a complete moral philosophy. The narrower conclusion is also the more defensible one: behaviour consistent with concern and practical support existed among our evolutionary relatives long before written religious commandments. This challenges claims that compassionate behaviour requires those commandments; it does not reveal everything Neanderthals believed.

It probably says more of those who claim they need a handbook to know how to behave well towards their fellows, than they would want us to know. It also portrays pre-Biblical and non-Biblical human society as violent and lawless - something not borne out by the evidence.

Empathy is an evolved trait because it provides a more cohesive society and therefore benefits the individuals within that culture, just as it appears to have benefitted this Neanderthal. Societies that lacked social cohesion would not survive in competition with those in which prosocial behaviour was normal.

The paper in Scientific Reports was announced in a University of Cambridge news report:

Fatal Neanderthal wound may be earliest evidence of a wooden spear attack on a human ancestor

A circular hole in a 75,000-year-old scapula suggests lethal conflict involving sharpened wooden spears among Neanderthals in the Middle East. The remains also show evidence of a brutal facial injury at least a year before death, meaning the Neanderthal was likely cared for prior to dying violently.

A round hole in the shoulder blade (scapula) of a Neanderthal whose partial remains were unearthed in a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan may be the earliest known example of lethal interpersonal violence with a wooden spear in the hominin fossil record.

The Neanderthal’s scapula – a broad, flat bone so thin in places it becomes almost translucent when held up to light – was preserved almost intact under seven-and-a-half metres of rock and sediment for around 75,000 years.

Intact, that is, apart from the 15mm-wide circular perforation, which Cambridge archaeologists who led the excavation say was made by a spear of sharpened wood, as a spear tip of flint or stone would leave a flat or angular hole.

The spear penetrated the left chest cavity from the front and travelled through the body – including lung and likely major arteries – before punching a hole in the left scapula, causing rapid death. Researchers think the fatal strike may have been an intended “heart shot”.

Bevelling around the hole is typical of an exit wound. The team found tiny shards of bone displaced by the weapon, the position of which suggests a spear entered from above at a downward trajectory. They were even able to piece back part of the hole using these fragments, guided by faint ridges where the bone was marked by muscle.

It’s extraordinary to have a perfectly preserved scapula from 75,000 years ago. These bones are so thin that you often don’t get complete scapulae from modern burials. We were able to lift it out in one piece from under almost eight metres of rock and sediment.

Dr Emma Pomeroy, lead author.
Department of Archaeology
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK.

Archaeologists call the remains Shanidar A, named for the famous cave in which they were found, and have published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

Due to decomposition, very few wooden objects survive from deep in prehistory. Some waterlogged examples of spears dated to around 200,000 years ago – when early Neanderthals roamed Europe – were found in Schöningen, Germany, in the 1990s.

These preserved spears – some over two metres long – were manufactured from carefully-selected timber to have weight distribution optimised for throwing, like modern javelins, and were probably used for hunting large game.

The earliest known rounded wooden spear is over 400,000 years old. Just the pointed end survived, pulled from the UK shoreline at Clacton-on-Sea in 1911.

Similar technology may well have caused the death of Shanidar A, argue researchers. They say the wound could be the first evidence for use of sharpened wooden spears in the prehistoric Middle East.

Holes left by recreations of spears from this time are an excellent fit for the one we found in the Neanderthal scapula. That early technology absolutely works for this wound. What evidence we have suggests that Neanderthals and their ancestors developed woodworking and weapon-making skills many thousands of years before the death of Shanidar A. This package of capabilities could have spanned the full range of Neanderthal homelands, from Wales to Siberia.

Dr Emma Pomeroy.

Multiple images of one of the spears found at Schöningen, Lower Saxony, Germany, in 1995, which is believed to be around 2-300,000 years old. This is Schöningen Spear II, replicas of which have been tested as javelin-style throwing spears.

Credit: Dirk Leder et al. (eds), Weapons, Tools and Technology (2026).

Pomeroy points out that the death might have been a hunting accident. “Animals such as mammoths may have been hunted up close with thrusting spears, so it’s easy to imagine lethal injuries.”

However, she says there are hints of deliberate violence. “The position of the wound and the force required to push it right through the Neanderthal’s body bear the hallmarks of an intended kill shot directed towards the heart.”

There is no way of knowing the context for the violence, and whether modern humans could have been involved, although archaeologists believe the most straightforward interpretation is interpersonal violence between Neanderthals.

All we can ever know about the end of this Neanderthal’s life is that it was violent, and came at the end of a wooden spear. Evidence of systematic violence is extremely rare in deep prehistory. The vast majority comes from periods of settled farming communities thousands of years after hunter-gather societies like our Neanderthals.

Professor Graeme Barker, co-author
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK.

Split tooth and signs of caring

The shoulder blade was excavated alongside a mostly complete right hand, two left ribs plus a right-rib fragment, and seven teeth – all that remains of an adult Neanderthal estimated to have been around 45 years old when they died violently.

One tooth, an incisor from the front of the lower jaw, had been split lengthways, with only half remaining, while surrounding teeth had been rotated inward.

The half-tooth had significant tartar (dental calculus) build-up along the exposed root canal, suggesting it stayed in the mouth for some time after what scientists say must have been major blunt-force trauma to the front of the face.

Surviving a blow that splits a tooth in this fashion, then continuing to live and eat for a period of at least a year and maybe more, would have required care and support from other Neanderthals. There’s no doubt that Shanidar A would have had difficulty communicating and been in absolute agony for a long period of time. The remains of Shanidar A reflect the dual nature of so much of what we recognise as human. On the one hand, we have evidence of a terribly violent end. On the other, this was clearly an individual who was cared for during their lifetime.

Dr Emma Pomeroy.

Shanidar A may have been fed soft food after the initial injury, says Pomeroy. Previous research on sediment in Shanidar Cave shows that plant foods were being soaked before cooking around the same time.

Various views of the mandibular left lateral incisor that had been spilt longitudinally. Views of the tooth, from left to right: top (chewing surface), bottom (root end). Middle: toward the front of the dental arch (mesial), toward the lips (labial), toward the back of the dental arch (distal), and toward the tongue (lingual).

It is fascinating to have evidence for both compassion and violence amongst Neanderthals, our closest evolutionary cousins, embodied in this one individual.

Professor Graeme Barker.

‘Funerary behaviour’

The vast cave in the foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan known as Shanidar is one of the world’s most famous Neanderthal sites. Excavations in the 1950s led by Ralph Solecki found ten individuals, including a “cluster” of four located in the same spot despite dying at different times, suggesting the Neanderthals had returned to inter their dead.

Map showing the location of Shanidar Cave.
Credit: Antiquity.

Remains of a Neanderthal from another part of the cave, who lived thousands of years later, showed evidence of a paralysed arm, arthritis, deafness and partial blindness. Yet they had lived a long life, so must have been cared for.

These signs of compassion, social support, and ritual around death, led to a revision of the Victorian view of Neanderthals as brutish and subhuman. Evidence of sophistication has continued to emerge, from cave art to jewellery, along with genetic analysis showing interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans.

Shanidar A was unearthed in 2020, and is one of three further Neanderthals found in the burial cluster by the Cambridge-led team since 2015, taking the total to five – four adults and an infant – in an area of the cave just 1.5 metres long by one metre wide, and a metre deep.

View of the entrance to Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Credit: Prof Graeme Barker

The spot is located directly behind a large vertical boulder, a “prominent marker”, and the remains are separated by thin layers of sediment. Shanidar A is the deepest yet found in the cluster, and possibly the first lain to rest in the space, positioned on their back, head facing east, as with the body directly above.

The best explanation is intentional and symbolic funerary behaviour. These Neanderthals returned to the same place to lay their dead to rest. Some were deposited before the earlier body had fully decomposed, so this was happening within years or decades.

Dr Emma Pomeroy.

Publication:
Pomeroy, E., Hunt, C.O., López-Polín, L. et al.
Evidence for funerary behaviour and lethal trauma in a new Neanderthal individual from Shanidar Cave.
Sci Rep 16, 30042 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-69193-z

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Abstract
Shanidar Cave has long featured in debates concerning Neanderthal cognitive capacity and behaviour, including evidence for care and intentional burial. By identifying additional individuals, including Shanidar A reported here, new excavations have expanded a burial cluster first identified in 1960. Shanidar A, an older adult, was deposited around 75,000 years ago, decayed, and their skeletal remains were subsequently disturbed by a flash flood. Our findings raise the minimum number of individuals in this unparalleled cluster to five, supporting interpretations of complex, potentially meaningful Neanderthal mortuary behaviour. Shanidar A also demonstrates major non-fatal trauma to the face and rare evidence of perimortem penetrating trauma among Neanderthals. Trauma among Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Neanderthals and modern humans, and subsequent survival, is common. However, the facial injury was severe and unusual. It suggests care from group members, the evolutionary origins of which are also contentious. The nature of the perimortem penetrating traumatic injury adds to a small corpus of such injuries in the hominin fossil record. The morphology of this scapula perforation is consistent with injury from a wooden spear, providing valuable (albeit indirect) evidence for the use of wooden implements in the Middle Palaeolithic, which is often difficult to demonstrate given the rare preservation of organic materials.

Fig. 1

Shanidar Cave. (a) View of Shanidar Cave from approximately the south. (Photo: G. Barker). (b) Plan of Shanidar Cave, showing Ralph Solecki’s excavation grid, with the locations of the Neanderthal remains indicated according to their assigned identification numbers e.g. 1= Shanidar 1. Black text denotes individuals dating to > 50 ka, while red denotes individuals dated to ~ 70–75 ka. Image: R. Lane and E. Pomeroy.

Fig. 2

(a) Schematic diagram looking approximately south depicting the spatial relationships between the Neanderthal individuals in the Shanidar 4/Z cluster. Sediments around the skeletal remains are mostly waterlain, and further boulders from later rock fall (depicted in (b)) overlay these sediments. The skeletal elements designated Shanidar 8 by Solecki are not shown as their precise location is unclear. The large vertical boulder (see 2b) lies directly behind (to the south of) the remains illustrated. Image: E. Pomeroy. (b) Section drawing looking approximately east showing the spatial relationships between individuals in the Shanidar 4/Z cluster. The level of the uppermost remains of each individual is indicated by the relevant number/letter (e.g., 6 = Shanidar 6, A = Shanidar A, etc.). Shanidar Z and B are shown in situ (red). The Shanidar 4 and 6 remains would have been towards the viewer (i.e. further west); their heights are estimated from Solecki’s publications and archival records (see¹⁶). The Shanidar A remains were further away from the viewer i.e., to the east of the section depicted here, and due to the slope of the sediments from east to west, in fact lay in contexts (stratigraphic units) just above the level of the base of Solecki’s excavation. The overlying rocks and the large vertical boulder to the right would have projected above the contemporary surface of the cave floor. The depressions below Shanidar Z/B, including that in which the Shanidar A remains lie, are additional shallow water channels resulting from separate flash flooding events. Image: E. Pomeroy and C. Hunt.

Fig. 3

The Shanidar A remains in situ. (a) The left ribs and right manual phalanges. The white arrow indicates the inferior angle of the left scapula. Scale: 100 mm in 10 mm divisions. (b) The left scapula. The inferior angle was removed previously when it was initially exposed in the section, and the remainder of the scapula (as shown in the photograph) was exposed as the section was cut back. The perforation of the scapula discussed in the text is clearly visible, and indicated with a white arrow. Scale: 100 mm in 10 mm divisions. (c) Schematic scale plan of the Shanidar A remains based on in situ photographs. The waterlain sediments in which the bones lay were deposited by shallow flows moving in the direction indicated by the blue arrows. Images: G. Barker, E. Pomeroy and C.O. Hunt.

Fig. 4

Right hand elements attributed to Shanidar A. Roman numerals denote digit number. Scale: 10 mm. Image: E. Pomeroy.

Fig. 5

The ribs and scapula attributed to Shanidar A. (a) Cranial view of the fragment of right rib and the two left ribs. (b) Ventral (left) and dorsal (right) views of the scapula. The white arrow indicates the dorsal sulcus. White areas are where the scapula has been reconstructed with a calcium carbonate/Paraloid B72 mixture. Scales: 20 mm. Image: E. Pomeroy.

Fig. 6

Refitting fragments embedded in the sediment below the perforation in the Shanidar A scapula. “1” indicates the same fragment in all images. (a) Ventral view of the perforation of the scapula, showing two refitting fragments. (b) The linea muscularis, highlighted by the dashed line, indicates that the fragments are correctly refitted. (c) 3D rendering of the perforation and fragments embedded in the sediment underneath the scapula in situ prior to conservation, in anterior view. The body of the scapula is semi-transparent to illustrate the positions of the fragments behind it. (d) 3D rendering showing the fragments originating from the perforation in the scapula in situ, viewed from the medial aspect. The dorsal side is to the right of the image. A video of the 3D rendering can be found in the Supplementary Information. Scale bar = 10 mm. Images: T. Van-Parys and E. Pomeroy.

Fig. 7

Enlargement of Fig. 3c showing the locations and inventory numbers of the teeth recovered (refer to Table S1 for details on individual teeth). Image: E. Pomeroy.

Fig. 8

The dental remains attributed to Shanidar A, and associated molar recovered below the Shanidar A scapula. SH 0226: Mandibular right canine; SH 0227: Mandibular right lateral incisor; SH 0228: Mandibular right central incisor; SH 0229: Mandibular left central incisor; SH 0230: Mandibular left lateral incisor; SH 0231: Mandibular left canine; SH 0232: Maxillary left third molar. Views of each tooth are (from left to right): top: occlusal; bottom: apical; middle: mesial, labial, distal, lingual. Numbers prefixed with ‘SH’ are inventory numbers (see Table S1). Scale: 10 mm. Images: E. Pomeroy and N. Moss.

Fig. 9

Shanidar A SH 0230 lateral incisor. (a) Photographs of the SH 0230 in (top to bottom and left to right) occlusal, mesial, apical, distal, lingual and labial views. Inset illustrates wear on the occlusal edge. (b) μCT tomographs of SH 0233 in the orientations illustrated in (a). (c) Reconstructed in vivo position of SH 0230 with SH 0229 and SH 0231 in (from left to right) occlusal, labial and lingual views. Dashed lines represent where teeth are truncated by material supporting them in position. Scales: 10 mm. Images: E. Pomeroy and N. Moss.

Fig. 10

Detail of the hole observed on the left scapula of Shanidar A. (a) Ventral view and (b) dorsal view of the scapula, showing the perforation. White arrows indicate the edge of the bevelled area. (c) µCT image of the perforation, with the bevelled margin indicated by white arrows; the area affected by bevelling is highlighted in white, and numbers 1 and 2 mark the location of the µCT section shown in (d). (d) µCT section showing part of the perforation edge affected by bevelling, where an acute fracture angle can be observed. Scale bars are 2 mm unless otherwise indicated. Image: A. Pantoja-Pérez and N. Sala.

Pomeroy, E., Hunt, C.O., López-Polín, L. et al.
Evidence for funerary behaviour and lethal trauma in a new Neanderthal individual from Shanidar Cave.
Sci Rep 16, 30042 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-69193-z

Copyright: © 2026 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

Shanidar A adds another small but revealing chapter to a human history that bears no resemblance to the compressed chronology of biblical literalism. Around 75,000 years ago, our Neanderthal relatives were living, suffering injuries and apparently helping one another survive them. Whatever uncertainties remain about this individual’s final moments, those uncertainties do not bring the remains tens of thousands of years forward in time to accommodate a creation myth.

Nor does evidence of a local flash flood rescue the story of Noah. The researchers have identified a particular disturbance within a much longer archaeological sequence, not the aftermath of a recent global catastrophe. The scientific task is to explain that sequence in detail: how the body was deposited, how it decomposed, how its remains were disturbed and how fragile evidence survived. Simply attaching the word “Flood” to any ancient water damage explains none of those things.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Shanidar A, however, is the combination of probable care and possible deliberate violence recorded in one individual. A hunting accident cannot be excluded, and the motives of those who may have provided care are beyond recovery. Nevertheless, the evidence is consistent with a social world in which vulnerable individuals could receive practical support. The foundations of compassionate behaviour evidently reach much deeper into our evolutionary history than the written commandments of religions that claim to have supplied them.

Science does not need to turn this Neanderthal into either a saint or a murder victim to make the discovery significant. Its strength lies in distinguishing evidence from inference and leaving unanswered questions open to further investigation. Creationism reverses that process: it begins with the answer and tries to make the evidence fit. Shanidar A is another reminder that our history is written in bones and sediments, whether or not it agrees with scripture.

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