A smooth, circular hole in the shoulder blade of a Neanderthal who died more than 70,000 years ago may be the oldest known evidence of a human ancestor killed by a wooden spear. Archaeologists uncovered the partial skeleton beneath nearly eight metres of rock and sediment in Shanidar cave, located in Iraqi Kurdistan. The adult, who was approximately 45 years old at death, had been placed alongside at least four other Neanderthals in a small depression behind a large boulder near the cave entrance.
Researchers examining the left shoulder blade identified a 1.5-centimetre-wide hole with three fractures radiating outwards, filled with tiny bone shards punched out upon impact. The damage pattern strongly suggests that a wooden spear struck the body from the front with enormous force. According to Dr Emma Pomeroy, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, the blow would have driven straight through the chest, likely puncturing a lung and severing major arteries before punching out through the shoulder blade in a strike directed at the heart.
Whether the fatal blow was a hunting accident or an act of intentional violence remains impossible to confirm. Neanderthals living at Shanidar hunted wild goats called ibex using wooden spears similar to modern javelins. Professor Chris Hunt of Liverpool John Moores University noted that while an accidental strike during a hunt is conceivable, purposeful interpersonal conflict cannot be ruled out. The individual had also survived earlier trauma; an analysis published in Scientific Reports revealed a lower incisor split vertically by a severe blow to the face at least a year before death, leaving the Neanderthal in pain that probably required help from others.
Wooden hunting tools rarely survive in the archaeological record because plant matter decomposes quickly, making physical evidence of prehistoric weapon injuries exceptionally rare. While timber spears dating back hundreds of thousands of years have occasionally been preserved in waterlogged soil, proof of fatal skirmishes is seldom found in fossilized bones. For researchers, the discovery offers a rare, vivid glimpse into the perilous everyday lives of Neanderthals and the social ties of a community that returned repeatedly to the same shelter to bury their dead.