This response is culturally interesting in its own right.

It suggests that the reconstructed face served a function that the scientific papers describing the same discovery could not: it made the abstract personal.

It turned a finding about Neanderthal burial practice into an encounter with a specific individual.

Archaeologists and anthropologists have long understood that public engagement with prehistoric findings depends heavily on the ability to connect abstract evidence to something concrete and humanly recognizable.

The reconstructed face of Shanidar Z is about as concrete and humanly recognizable as ancient evidence gets.