Reconstruction of the burial discovered at Shanidar, on the slopes of the Zagros Mountains in Kurdistan (North-eastern Iraq), a site inhabited by Neanderthal man between 60,000 and 44,000 years B.P. The grave contains the skeleton of an adult man, lying on a carpet of herbs and covered with flowering plants with brilliant colours. Scholars have discovered that most of these plants have pharmacological properties and are still employed today in popular medicine. This finding justifies the hypothesis that Neanderthal man already showed a particular carefulness for the burial of the dead, a practice probably related with a belief in a continuity of existence beyond death.
National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA.


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