SKELETONS FROM SHANIDAR CAVE—SOLECKI 607 
When first seen, the top of the skull was a small thing perched 
on the eastern edge of the yawning excavation and lost in the gloom 
of the huge cavern (pls. 1,2). It was difficult to realize at first that 
we had an extreme rarity in human paleontology before us. It 
looked like an earthy-colored protuberance at the very end of a narrow 
ledge in a sheer wall of stones and earth. The stark whiteness of the 
limestone blocks and the fragments of rocks around it contrasted 
sharply with the fresh brown-colored soils in the section, crisscrossed 
by pick marks. Seen more closely, and except for the just emergent 
heavy brow ridge, the skull cap looked like a very soiled and broken 
gigantic egg. It lay in the southeast quarter of square B 7, at a depth 
of 4.1 m. from the cave surface at that point, or 4.34 m. below “0” 
datum? (fig. 3). The skull faced to the south toward the cave en- 
trance, about 13 m. away. Some broken limestone rocks jutted out 
near it. A preliminary survey showed that the shaft of my 1953 
season excavation had missed the skull by a scant 25 cm., an extremely 
small margin. 
It was very hard to visualize this heavy-browed skull as belonging 
to modern man, as expected if the find were really in the Upper 
Paleolithic Baradostian layer as recorded by Smith. A recheck of 
the stratigraphy showed that this observation was in error because 
of the rockfalls in this quarter. Actually the skull lay in the very 
top of Layer D, the Mousterian layer. 
It was noted that the find lay about 2.75 m. to the north, slightly to 
the east, and 70 cm. above a collection of then unidentified bones 
(field cat. No. 384 III) (pl. 1). The latter were exposed in the 
northeast quarter of square B 9. These bones were being cleaned 
and readied for photographing and drawing. 
Above the thin bed of moist soil in which the skull lay was a 40-cm. 
thickness of limestone rockfall, consisting of broken blocks, above 
which in turn was a solid block of limestone about 50 cm. thick. The 
notch or shelf in which the skull lay was barely large enough to hold 
three people standing in single file. Only one person could con- 
veniently work on the skull at a time. 
Actually the skull rested in one of three closely spaced thin occu- 
pational strata. These lay within a discontinuous thickness of rock- 
falls extending between the depths of 3.5 to 5.5 m. below “0” datum at 
that point. The stones of the rockfalls were shattered and broken, 
intermingled with patches of light-gray powdery rock meal. Some of 
the soils may have washed in or drifted in following the rockfalls. 
Immediately above the approximately 1.0-m. thickness of rocks above 
the skull was a dark-brown loamy soil layer between 75 and 125 cm. 
thick, identified as Layer C. It contained heavy occupational evi- 
dence, including Baradostian flints. 
2 Unless noted otherwise, all depths are given from “‘0’”’ datum. 
