South Kurdistan · Bashur · Prehistory
Shanidar Cave
The first shelter: a great cave in the Zagros where Neanderthals lived and buried their dead, and where some of the earliest villagers later came.
- Period
- Tens of thousands of years
- Place
- Bradost mountain, Erbil province
- Region
- South Kurdistan · Bashur
- Age
- Prehistory
Architecture begins with shelter, and Shanidar is one of the most famous shelters in human history. Excavations from the 1950s found the remains of ten Neanderthals here — among them a man who had lived for years with serious injuries, which means others cared for him. A new skeleton was found in 2018.
Much later, around the end of the last Ice Age, people of the Zagros used the cave and the slope below it as they moved toward settled life. The cave sits high above the Great Zab valley, and can be visited.
Chosen and introduced by Aram Mizuri, architect in Erbil