A 40-something woman was buried in a cave 75,000 years ago, laid to rest in a gully hollowed out to accommodate her body. Her left hand was curled under her head, and a rock behind her head may have been placed as a cushion. Known as Shanidar Z, after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where she was found in 2018, the woman was a Neanderthal, a type of ancient human that disappeared around 40,000 years ago. Scientists studying her remains have painstakingly pieced together her skull from 200 bone fragments, a process that took nine months. They used the contours of the face and skull to guide a reconstruction to understand what she may have looked like.The striking recreation is featured in a new documentary “Secrets of the Neanderthals” produced by BBC for Netflix, which is available for streaming on Thursday. With pronounced brow ridges and no chins, the skulls of…
