70,000-year-old mysterious tomb buried another human race

Not only the smart but an extinct human species, once considered barbarians, has had very mysterious funeral customs with ancient tombs full of flowers.

New research by British scientists is said to be "shocking" to show that the Neanderthals are not an ancient barbarian, swarm herds and leave their bodies everywhere. From 70,000 years ago, they had very special funeral customs

According to Professor Graeme Barker from the McDonald Institute of Archeology in Cambridge, the new excavation at Shanidar cave in Iraqi Kurdistan shows that the remains here are intentionally buried.

One of the ancient tombs has been excavated - (photo courtesy of the team).

At the burial site named Shanidar Z , there are all 10 skeletons of Neanderthals, women, and children. Previously, when people found a lot of ancient pollen around the location of the corpses and thought they were actually buried, that hypothesis was controversial.

This time, however, scientists have found decisive evidence: in addition to being placed neatly into a separate cave floor, there are clear traces of the grave, helping the dead be laid deeper. Therefore, it can be said that it is not just a cave with human bones but a cemetery of the extinct Neanderthals.

Shanidar Cave - (photo: James Gordon)

"In recent years, we have found more and more evidence that Neanderthals are more sophisticated than previously understood. If they used the Shanidar cave as a memorial and burial place for the dead, then that will be evidence for a complex culture " - Professor Pomeroy declared.

The research has just been published in the scientific journal Antiquity.

Neanderthals are thought to have appeared about 800,000 years ago, about 500,000 years earlier than our Homo sapiens (also called modern humans). They are said to be the most ancient humans who are similar to us, have good physique, are strong hunters. Neanderthals once met clever people and had heterosexual marriages, leaving biological traces in the DNA of many modern Europeans. They went extinct about 30,000-50,000 years ago.