75,000 years ago, in Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, a Neanderthal died with a spear through the chest. The evidence is a hole in the left shoulder blade. Almost perfectly round, 15 millimeters wide, beveled on the back like an exit wound. Chips of bone from that hole still lay in the soil beneath it. A stone point leaves an angular hole. This one matches a sharpened wooden spear, making it the oldest known wound of its kind. The same person, around 45, had already survived a blow to the face that split a front tooth in half. They lived on for at least a year, almost certainly fed and helped by others. After death they were placed behind a great boulder. In the years that followed, four more Neanderthals were laid in that same small space. Cared for in life. Speared in death. Buried among their own. Hunting accident or murder? The researchers leave that question open. The fatal wound of Shanidar A, a Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan, about 75,000 years old. A 3D micro-CT rendering of the hole in the shoulder blade, with bone fragments still embedded in the soil beneath it. 3D rendering by T. Van-Parys and E. Pomeroy, Pomeroy et al., Scientific Reports (2026), CC BY 4.0