partially blind. His injuries had healed, which suggested that he must have
been cared for by other members of his social group. Another, Shanidar
IV, had apparently been buried, and the results of a soil analysis from the
gravesite convinced Solecki that Shanidar IV had been interred with
flowers. This he took as evidence of a deep Neanderthal spirituality.
A Neanderthal who’s been given a shave and a new suit.
“We are brought suddenly to the realization that the universality of
mankind and the love of beauty go beyond the boundary of our own
species,” he wrote in a book about his discovery, Shanidar: The First Flower
People. Some of Solecki’s conclusions have since been challenged—it seems
more likely that the flowers were brought into the cave by burrowing
rodents than by grieving relatives—but his ideas had a wide influence, and
it is Solecki’s soulful near-humans who are on display in the Neander
Valley. In the museum’s dioramas, Neanderthals live in tepees, wear what
look like leather yoga pants, and gaze contemplatively over the frozen
landscape. “Neanderthal man was not some prehistoric Rambo,” one of
the display tags admonishes. “He was an intelligent individual.”
DNA is often compared to a text, a comparison that’s apt as long as the
definition of “text” encompasses writing that doesn’t make sense. DNA