A circular puncture the size of a large marble sits in the left shoulder blade of a Neanderthal known as Shanidar A. The bone, roughly 75,000 years old, comes from Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan. Researchers led from Cambridge argue the 15-millimetre opening was bored by a sharpened wooden shaft, not a stone tip — stone points usually leave flatter or angular breaks.
Their reconstruction has the weapon piercing the left chest from the front, damaging the lung and probably major blood vessels before leaving through the scapula. The angled bone edges and scattered fragments suggest a downward path from above; death would have followed quickly, and the thrust may have been aimed at the heart.
Emma Pomeroy of Cambridge’s archaeology department is the lead author; Graeme Barker directs the Shanidar digs. Pieces recovered in 2020 from a burial cluster include the scapula, an almost complete right hand, ribs and seven teeth from an adult about 45 years old. The cluster itself is cited as evidence of deliberate funerary behaviour.
Whether the blow was a hunting mishap with thrusting spears against large game or a fight between Neanderthals remains unsettled. The plainest reading, the team notes, is interpersonal violence. Wooden spears almost never survive in the ground; rare parallels include the Schöningen set at about 200,000 years and a Clacton tip older than 400,000 years.
Shanidar A also carried an older scar of survival: a split lower front tooth coated with tartar inside the open canal points to at least a year of life after severe facial trauma, likely with soft food and help from others. The Scientific Reports paper therefore pairs lethal force with earlier care — a reminder that Neanderthal worlds could be both brutal and cooperative.
