Archaeologists reveal reconstructed face of 75,000yo Neanderthal woman

May 4, 2024 7:56 AM

Archaeologists reveal reconstructed face of 75,000yo Neanderthal woman. The Neanderthal woman's skull was discovered in 2018 in a cave in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (7 comments total)

It's nice to see how much better facial reconstruction has gotten. Neanderthals looked more like us than we've been told and it's not surprising that we interbred with them.
posted by tommasz at 8:57 AM on May 4

this is really amazing. I love the devotion to such painstaking work. I agree that she looks very 'relatable' to me, across so many years.
posted by supermedusa at 9:30 AM on May 4 [2 favorites]

definitely seems like someone who'd be fun to hang out with. lots of good stories, no respect for bs.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:38 AM on May 4 [1 favorite]

Shanidar Z is the fifth body to be identified in the cluster buried over a period of at least several hundred years right behind the rock in the centre of the cave.

Archaeologists believe the stone was used as an identifier to allow itinerant Neanderthals to return to the same spot to bury their dead.

I'm going with the "Flower Burial" theory. It just sounds right. People once inhabited those bones.
posted by mule98J at 2:39 PM on May 4 [2 favorites]

She looks spry for a 75,000-year-old
posted by salix at 12:09 AM on May 5 [1 favorite]

This woman is the spitting image of MTG
posted by knackerthrasher at 12:21 PM on May 5

I was under the impression that human (well...homo sapiens) facial reconstruction was based on the anatomical analysis of large numbers of human faces to determine the probable thickness, shape and placement of the various things that need to be molded to create a face that looks anything like the original. Which doesn't exists for a Neanderthal (other than, I guess, the anchor points for tendons which tells you something about muscle size). So am I missing something or is this just a wild ass guess as to what she looked like?
posted by kjs3 at 4:09 PM on May 6