Shanidar Z — The 75,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Woman Whose Crushed Skull Was Rebuilt From More Than 200 Pieces

That number made it one of the richest Neanderthal skeletal sites ever found.

But the cave’s real fame came from a specific claim made about one of those individuals — and from the discovery of Shanidar Z, which reopened every question the earlier finds had raised.

Ralph Solecki and the Excavations That Changed Everything

The modern scientific investigation of Shanidar Cave began in the late 1950s, when Ralph Solecki of Columbia University led a series of excavations between 1957 and 1961.

Solecki was not primarily looking for Neanderthal remains.