The archaeological and fossil record shows Neanderthal populations declining and fragmenting as modern human populations expanded into Europe and western Asia.

Whatever the precise mechanism — resource competition, disease, demographic pressure, assimilation into expanding modern human groups — the result was that the distinctive Neanderthal morphology and the specifically Neanderthal archaeological traditions disappeared.

The individuals buried at Shanidar Cave lived during or before the period of maximum contact between Neanderthals and modern humans in the region.

Shanidar Z, at approximately 75,000 years old, predates the earliest modern human presence in Europe.

But she lived in a region — the Zagros and the broader Near East — that was part of the pathway through which modern humans moved as they expanded out of Africa.