KILLED BY A WOODEN SPEAR 75,000 YEARS AGO: A Neanderthal’s Shoulder Blade May Hold the Oldest Evidence of a Spear Attack

Quick answer: A round, 15-millimetre hole in the shoulder blade of a Neanderthal buried about 75,000 years ago in Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan, may be the earliest known evidence of a person killed with a wooden spear. A study in Scientific Reports led by the University of Cambridge says the spear entered the chest from the front and exited through the left scapula, causing a rapid death. The individual, known as Shanidar A, had also survived a severe blow to the face at least a year earlier, which suggests others cared for them. Researchers cannot say whether the fatal wound came from an attack or a hunting accident.

Most of what we know about Neanderthal weapons comes from stone points, because wood rots away. That makes a single, almost perfectly preserved shoulder blade unusually valuable. The bone was lifted out in one piece from under nearly eight metres of rock and sediment, and the hole through it tells a story of violence, technology and care that is now spreading far beyond archaeology circles.

What researchers found in Shanidar Cave

Shanidar Cave, in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, is one of the world’s most famous Neanderthal sites. Excavations led by Ralph Solecki in the 1950s found ten individuals, including a tight cluster of bodies buried in the same spot. A Cambridge-led team returned in 2015 and has been digging beside that cluster ever since.

The new individual, Shanidar A, was excavated in 2019 and 2022, according to the open-access paper by Emma Pomeroy and colleagues. The remains are partial: a largely complete right hand, two left ribs, a fragment of a right rib, a left scapula (shoulder blade) and a set of heavily worn teeth. Based on that wear, the team estimates the person was an older adult by Neanderthal standards, about 45 years old. Their sex could not be determined.

“It’s extraordinary to have a perfectly preserved scapula from 75,000 years ago,” lead author Dr Emma Pomeroy told the University of Cambridge. “These bones are so thin that you often don’t get complete scapulae from modern burials.”

Why the hole points to a wooden spear

The perforation sits in the broad, thin part of the left shoulder blade. It is about 15 mm across, almost perfectly circular, and at least three cracks radiate out from it. The study lists several clues that it happened around the time of death rather than long afterwards:

• No healing. Microscope and micro-CT scans showed no regrown bone around the edges, so the person did not survive the injury.
• An exit wound. The edge of the hole is bevelled on the back of the bone, a pattern typical of an object passing from front to back.
• Bone fragments in the sediment. Scans of the soil block beneath the scapula revealed at least four small bone fragments. One fits back into the hole exactly, confirmed by a faint muscle ridge that continues across the break.
• No other culprit. The team found no roots, burrows, carnivore tooth marks or recent damage that could explain the hole.

The shape of the hole matters most. Experiments show that stone-tipped weapons tend to leave oval or diamond-shaped holes with narrow edges, while a sharpened wooden spear with a rounded cross-section leaves a round one. “Holes left by recreations of spears from this time are an excellent fit for the one we found in the Neanderthal scapula,” Pomeroy said. “That early technology absolutely works for this wound.”

How the fatal blow was delivered

The researchers conclude that the spear entered the left side of the chest while the person was facing forward, passed through the lung and probably major blood vessels, and punched out through the shoulder blade. Fragments displaced slightly downward and outward suggest it came in at a downward angle. Death would have been quick.

Murder or hunting accident?

This is the question everyone asks, and the honest answer is that nobody knows. The paper states plainly that whether the wound came from “a hunting accident or from interpersonal violence cannot be known.”

Both scenarios are plausible. Co-author Chris Hunt of Liverpool John Moores University told The Guardian that the Neanderthals at Shanidar mainly hunted ibex and could have used javelin-like wooden spears to do it. “Conceivably it was a hunting accident,” he said. “We can’t, however, rule out that purposeful interpersonal violence was involved.”

Pomeroy leans toward a deliberate strike. “The position of the wound and the force required to push it right through the Neanderthal’s body bear the hallmarks of an intended kill shot directed towards the heart,” she said. Cambridge notes that the simplest interpretation is violence between Neanderthals, although there is no way to rule out early modern humans.

Excavation leader Prof Graeme Barker put the limits of the evidence this way: “All we can ever know about the end of this Neanderthal’s life is that it was violent, and came at the end of a wooden spear.” He added that evidence of systematic violence is extremely rare this far back, and most of it comes from farming societies thousands of years later.

Not the first spear injury at Shanidar

Shanidar A is the second case of a penetrating wound from the cave. A Neanderthal known as Shanidar 3 has a puncture wound in a rib, which earlier research interpreted as an injury from a stone-tipped weapon. Shanidar 3 is around 25,000 years younger, however, and in that case too, nobody can say who threw the weapon.

A split tooth and signs of care

The spear wound was not the only injury. One of Shanidar A’s lower front teeth had been split lengthways, leaving only half, and the teeth next to it had rotated inward. The broken surface was thickly coated with dental calculus (hardened plaque), and its biting edge was still being polished by chewing.

That means the tooth stayed in the mouth and in use for a long time after a major blow to the face. “Surviving a blow that splits a tooth in this fashion, then continuing to live and eat for a period of at least a year and maybe more, would have required care and support from other Neanderthals,” Pomeroy said. She suggests Shanidar A may have been fed soft food; earlier work at the cave showed that plant foods were being soaked before cooking around the same time.

Shanidar Cave has a long record of this kind of evidence. Another Neanderthal from the cave, who lived thousands of years later, had a paralysed arm, deafness and partial blindness yet lived a long life, which also implies support from the group. “It is fascinating to have evidence for both compassion and violence amongst Neanderthals, our closest evolutionary cousins, embodied in this one individual,” Barker said.

A burial place used again and again

The find also strengthens the case that Neanderthals deliberately returned to one spot to lay their dead to rest. Shanidar A brings the minimum number of individuals in the cluster to five: four adults and one infant, all within an area about 1.5 metres long, 1 metre wide and 1 metre deep. The cluster sits directly behind a large upright boulder that would have been a prominent landmark on the cave floor.

Shanidar A is the deepest and probably the earliest body placed there, lying on their back with the head to the east, like the individual above. Some later bodies were placed before earlier ones had fully decomposed, so the burials likely happened within years or decades of each other. A flash flood later disturbed the bones, which is why only parts of the skeleton survive.

“The best explanation is intentional and symbolic funerary behaviour,” Pomeroy said. The cluster includes Shanidar 4, the famous “flower burial” found in 1960. That flower interpretation has not held up to later study, but the repeated use of the same small space is hard to explain any other way, the authors argue.

What this says about Neanderthal technology

Wooden tools almost never survive tens of thousands of years, so evidence for them is precious. The oldest known wooden spear is the tip found at Clacton-on-Sea, England, in 1911, which is more than 400,000 years old. Spears from Schöningen, Germany, some over two metres long and balanced for throwing like javelins, date to around 200,000 years ago.

Shanidar A offers indirect but valuable evidence that similar weapons were in use in the Middle East around 75,000 years ago. As Pomeroy put it, this package of woodworking and weapon-making skills “could have spanned the full range of Neanderthal homelands, from Wales to Siberia.” For a broader picture of our extinct cousins, the Natural History Museum’s guide to the Neanderthals is a good starting point.

If you enjoy discoveries that rewrite the deep past, read about the world’s oldest shipwreck found off Turkey, see how our ancestors witnessed a star explode in 1181, or explore Son Doong, the largest cave on Earth. More stories are in our Science section.

Frequently asked questions

Was a Neanderthal really killed by a spear?

Very likely. The round hole in Shanidar A’s shoulder blade, its bevelled exit side, radiating cracks, bone fragments pushed out of the wound and the absence of healing all point to a spear passing through the chest around the time of death.

How old is the Shanidar A Neanderthal?

Shanidar A was buried about 75,000 years ago in Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan. Based on tooth wear, the individual was an older adult of about 45 years.

Why do scientists think the spear was made of wood?

The hole is almost perfectly circular. Experiments show that sharpened wooden spears with a rounded cross-section leave round holes, while stone-tipped weapons tend to leave oval or diamond-shaped ones.

Was it murder or a hunting accident?

No one can know for sure. The lead author says the wound’s position and force suggest an intended “kill shot” to the heart, but the study says a hunting accident cannot be ruled out.

Did Neanderthals care for their injured?

The evidence suggests so. Shanidar A survived a facial blow that split a tooth and lived at least a year afterwards, which researchers say would have required care and support from other Neanderthals.

Sources: Pomeroy et al., Scientific Reports (2026); University of Cambridge; The Guardian; Natural History Museum.

Featured image: View from inside Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan, by Hardscarf, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.