Gurche’s reconstructions, including the Shanidar Z work, are generally recognized for their scientific rigor and their effort to represent Neanderthal morphology accurately rather than either caricaturing the individuals as primitive or projecting modern human features onto them.

The goal, as Gurche has described it, is to create an image that honestly represents what the evidence supports — neither more human-like than the bones indicate nor more alien than the evidence warrants.

That calibration is both a scientific and an ethical challenge.

The Living Relationship

One of the important aspects of the Shanidar Z research that tends to get less attention in popular coverage is the relationship between this science and the living people of the region where the cave is located.

Shanidar Cave is in Iraqi Kurdistan.