The infant’s remains were in a position suggesting deliberate placement.

None of these sites provides unambiguous, undeniable evidence of intentional burial that would satisfy the most skeptical critics.

Each can be explained, to varying degrees, by alternative hypotheses.

But the pattern across multiple sites, in multiple regions, over an extended time span, has increasingly been read as cumulative evidence for intentional burial practice.

Shanidar Z adds to this pattern.

The new Cambridge excavation provides one of the most carefully documented and methodologically rigorous single-site cases in the record for deliberate Neanderthal burial.

The DNA Silence: What Shanidar Z Could Not Tell Us