They had spread from the Atlantic coast of Europe to the mountains of Central Asia and the shores of the Zagros.

The Shanidar Neanderthals were part of this world.

Their cave had been occupied for tens of thousands of years before Shanidar Z was born.

It would continue to be occupied for tens of thousands of years after she died.

The community she was part of was not primitive and isolated — it was part of a broadly distributed population that had been successfully adapting to one of the world’s great mountain environments for a very long time.

When researchers argue about what her burial implies about Neanderthal cognition, they are arguing about what the people in that community were capable of thinking and feeling.