Mysterious hole in Neanderthal shoulder blade may have been a 'kill shot' from a wooden spear, according to archaeologists

A Neanderthal who was buried 75,000 years ago in Shanidar Cave in Iraq died from a wooden spear straight through the chest, archaeologists have revealed.

While it's impossible to know exactly what happened, the violence may have been a targeted hit.

"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," study first author Emma Pomeroy , a paleoanthropologist at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement .

In a study published Thursday (Oct.

15) in the journal Scientific Reports , Pomeroy and co-authors analyzed the bones of Shanidar A, a Neanderthal who died violently at about age 45 and was then buried in Shanidar Cave.

The archaeological site at Shanidar is famous for its evidence of purposeful burial, which experts once thought was only done by modern humans .

Although the Neanderthal " flower burial " at Shanidar has since been debunked, the cave holds other evidence of repeated Neanderthal burials, which shows that these extinct humans placed specific meaning on that location, the authors wrote in the study.

The skeleton of Shanidar A was incomplete when it was discovered in 2019, consisting of a mostly complete right hand, three ribs, six teeth and a left scapula or shoulder blade, which meant they could not figure out the sex of the Neanderthal.

Near the edge of the shoulder blade, archaeologists noticed a round hole about 0.6 inches (1.5 centimeters) in diameter and a round piece of bone that had been punched out of the shoulder blade.

The researchers ruled out post-mortem damage to the bone, including animal gnawing and insect burrowing.

An example of a Paleolithic thrusting spear found in Germany.

This may have been the kind of weapon that killed the Shanidar A Neanderthal. (Image credit: Dirk Leder et al. (eds), Weapons, Tools and Technology (2026)) "The perforation is best explained as resulting from perimortem [around the time of death] penetrating trauma, such as that caused by a projectile or a thrusting implement such as a spear," the researchers wrote in the study.

Specifically, the Neanderthal was killed by a spear that entered their chest from the front at a high velocity and pierced their shoulder blade.

The shape of the wound in the shoulder blade appears to match experimental evidence of injuries made by wooden spears rather than stone-tipped weapons, the researchers wrote in the study.