next meet Shanidar Z she's a 75,000 year old
Neanderthal and amazing work by scientists has revealed what she might have looked like
but how BBC science editor Rebecca Morelle has more revealed for the first time a face from
the ancient past a female Neanderthal who lived 75,000 years ago she's been called Shanidar Z
we can say that she's Neanderthal from various features so perhaps the most obvious one
is this quite large brow ridge that runs across above the eyes um but also things like
the shape of the nose she was probably around her mid-40s with particularly worn teeth
some infections some some gum disease as well the skull was found like this
in profile and completely flattened transforming the crushed skull into what you can
see here has been astonishingly difficult it's made from hundreds of fragments of incredibly
fragile bone that have been painstakingly pieced together it's like the ultimate 3D jigsaw
puzzle and it's taken the best part of a year to complete the skeleton was discovered in a cave in
the Kurdistan Region of Iraq archaeologists have been unearthing Neanderthal remains there since
the 1950s they've found bones from at least ten individuals since the first excavations the
cave has been transforming our understanding of Neanderthals the species disappeared about
40,000 years ago while modern humans that's us thrived but now there's evidence from the cave
they used tools built fires and cook together for the archaeologists touching the past is all
about telling the stories of these ancient people it's a massive privilege actually it's very
exciting to start getting glimpses of what her life was like there are really important things
that we can learn about her as an individual about the group that she was part of
learning about Shanidar Z also reveals more about us so she could reveal
just how similar or different we are