628 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
The dangers of the caveman’s life were by no means shut out when 
he crossed the portal to his airy cave home. He never knew when a 
falling stone would come crashing down. But it evidently did not 
worry the Neanderthals any more than it does the Kurds at Shanidar 
Cave today. Shanidar Cave lies in an earthquake belt, and earth- 
quakes undoubtedly triggered the repeated rockfalls. Actually a 
geological fault passes in front of the cave. 
At least four major rockfall series could be identified in the excava- 
tion: One at 9 m. depth, a second at 6 m., a third at 4 m., and a fourth 
(and possible fifth) near the top. The minor rockfalls probably num- 
bered over a score. Some estimation could be made of the sequence 
and contemporaneity of rockfalls by tracing the deposits in which 
they lay. None of the rockfalls, not even the severest, blanketed the 
entire floor of the cave so far as could be observed, nor were the rock- 
falls of regular thicknesses. Their distribution depended on natural 
structural weaknesses in the limestone cave ceiling. The spread of 
large stones on the modern surface of the cave floor attests the 
fact that the rockfalls have not ceased. I can attest, too, that I ex- 
perienced an earth tremor while at work in the cave during the sum- 
mer of 1953. Happily, no rockfalls accompanied this quake. 
The Stone Age dwellers of Shanidar Cave, like the modern Kurdish 
occupants, naturally lived around the rock areas and among them. 
Their household debris and the accumulating soil gradually filled in 
the areas among the stones, leveling the rough parts of the cave floor 
until another ceiling collapse started the whole process all over again. 
It is highly unlikely that a large group of Shanidar people were killed 
in the cave at one time. The cave deposits show that reoccupation 
began shortly after each rockfall, at least up to about the time of 
Shanidar I Mousterian times. 
When the skeletons were brought to Baghdad and were awaiting 
disposition in June 1957, I pointed out to Dr. Naji al Asil, then Di- 
rector General of the Directorate General of Antiquities, that the 
expedition’s sponsor, the Smithsonian Institution, had a qualified 
physical anthropologist, Dr. T. D. Stewart, who could make a study 
of the remains. The suggestion was accepted, and telegrams were 
dispatched to the Smithsonian Institution, inviting Dr. Stewart to 
come to Baghdad. Unfortunately, he was not able to arrive until 
October 1957, after the skeletons of Shanidar I and II had been dis- 
membered by the laboratory technicians in the Iraq Museum. As 
mentioned above, Shanidar III had been shipped to Washington. 
The material, including the artifacts, recovered from Shanidar 
Cave have not yet been fully studied. Studies of soil and pollen 
