The qualities that made the cave attractive to Neanderthal bands 75,000 years ago — its size, its orientation, the spring nearby, its position in the landscape — made it attractive to every subsequent population that encountered it.

The humans who sheltered there in the twentieth century were, in a purely practical sense, doing what the humans who sheltered there 75,000 years ago had done: using an exceptionally good piece of natural architecture.

The difference is that we can now excavate the remains of those earlier occupations and try to understand what the people who lived there were like.

The Neanderthals who used Shanidar Cave left stone tools, animal bones, and, in a corner of the cave, the remains of their dead.