The Shanidar Cave Project with Professor Graeme Barker (1965)

Ever since their discovery over 150 years ago, the Neanderthals have had a bad press, but mounting evidence including from current excavations in Shanidar Cave (Iraqi Kurdistan) shows them in a very different light. What do these latest findings tell us about the Neanderthals, our closest evolutionary cousins? Why did they go extinct rather than us? 

Shanidar Cave is an iconic Neanderthal site as a result of 1951–1960 excavations by Ralph Solecki (Columbia University): he found the skeletal remains of 10 Neanderthals, one of whom had been badly injured as a young man but died as an adult so must have been cared for by his community, and another whom Solecki argued had been buried with flowers. 

New excavations I have been leading since 2015 have shown the lives of the Shanidar Neanderthals to be ever more complex – the Netflix documentary ‘Secrets of the Neanderthals’ released in May 2024 gives a flavour of this. One unexpected result of the film is that the Shanidar Neanderthals are now entangled in Kurdish identity politics – the past, even the remote past, is never neutral!

Join us for a fascinating virtual talk featuring alumnus Professor Graeme Barker, who will delve into the ground-breaking discoveries of the Shanidar Cave Project. This international collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Kurdistan Directorate of Antiquities has reignited exploration of this iconic archaeological site since 2015.

This talk will take place on Tuesday 11 February at 6pm on Zoom.

Bookings for this event have closed. Please contact development@joh.cam.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

How to make the most of our virtual events

Find a quiet, private spaces
It’s important to find a quiet space to listen to the talk in order not to be disruptive to others while your microphone is on.

Always mute your microphone if you are not speaking
This ensures you enter the talk quietly and that any background noises that could be distracting to the speaker and other participants are now inaudible. To “mute” yourself, click the “Mute” button (microphone). A red slash will appear over the microphone icon indicating that your audio is now off.

Raise your hand
During the Q&A session, click on the icon labelled “Participants” at the bottom centre of your PC or Mac screen. At the bottom of the window on the right side of the screen, click the button labelled “Raise Hand.” Your digital hand is now raised, and the moderator will tell you when it’s your turn to ask your question.