What she actually looked like, no one alive can know.

The reconstruction is the most scientifically grounded estimate currently possible — which is not the same as a photograph.

The Skull Alone Tells One Story.

The Position Tells Another.

The reconstruction of the face answered the question in the headline — how do you rebuild a skull from more than two hundred fragments — but the scientifically more significant findings came from where the skull was found and how it was positioned.

Shanidar Z was not an isolated find.