What changed
A 15mm hole in the shoulder blade of Shanidar A, a Neanderthal who died about 75,000 years ago in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan, may be the earliest evidence of lethal violence involving a sharpened wooden spear in the prehistoric Middle East.
University of Cambridge archaeologists say the spear may have entered the chest and passed through the body, leaving a near-perfect hole in the left shoulder blade. The remains also include a right hand, three ribs and teeth.
Why it matters
A single hole cannot settle whether Shanidar A was attacked by a rival or struck by a companion during a hunt. But its shape is difficult to explain as an ordinary break: experiments with reconstructed wooden spears produced similar circular holes.
That makes this more than a grisly curiosity. Wooden weapons usually disappear, while bone can preserve the wound they leave behind. The archaeological record may therefore be showing only a small, damaged window into how often Neanderthals used force against one another.
The earlier Shanidar find adds weight to that possibility. Another Neanderthal from the cave, who lived about 50,000 years ago, had a partly healed rib injury probably caused by a stone-tipped spear. A 2022 study from Spain’s Pit of Bones site identified 57 healed head injuries among 20 Neanderthals, including nine potentially fatal skull fractures.
The informed reading is that violence was probably part of Neanderthal life, but its scale remains uncertain. If future discoveries identify more weapon injuries, the picture of Neanderthals may shift further from isolated accidents toward societies in which human conflict was a recurring danger.
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