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An archeological team from the University of Cambridge has been carrying out excavations in the Shanidar Cave in the north of the Kurdistan Region. They want to discover the reason behind the extinction of the ancient human Neanderthal species.
Emma Pomeroy is an archeologist from the university, working to discover the 11th skeleton of a Neanderthal human and examining the species' burial methods.
Previous archaeological teams "didn’t have the modern methods that we have to be able to understand whether or not this is a true burial. Whereas now, we have a new opportunity to investigate that really important flower burial but also this new individual," she says.
In 1960, nine skeletons of Neanderthals were discovered. The 10th was found last year.
The study seeks answers to why the Neanderthals died out when they did, head archeologist Graeme Barker says.
The first excavation at Shanidar Cave was conducted in 1951. Its history dates back to The Stone Age -nearly 8,000 BC. It’s the largest cave in Kurdistan Region and Iraq.
More than 3,000 archeological sites have been recorded in the Kurdistan Region.
Reporting by Bakhtiyar Qadir
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