Word: solecki
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...less elegant spot, Ralph Solecki of the Smithsonian Institution was digging into an even more distant past. Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq is still inhabited during the winter months by about 40 Kurds and their flocks and herds. Last year Solecki became interested in the debris on the cave's floor. Back at Shanidar early this year, financed by a Fulbright grant and surrounded by fascinated Kurds, Archaeologist Solecki carefully dug a square shaft in the promising deposit. The top layers were modern. Just below, he found tools and fragments of pottery from the "historic period" when Shanidar belonged...
Under the curious eyes of the cave's living tenants, the shaft sank, foot after foot, toward the dimmest beginnings of human history. Subtle changes in bits of stone, covered by the garbage of ancient man, told of the shifts of culture. Solecki spent many feet of digging in the Aurignacian period (of the well-built Cro-Magnon men). Then he entered the Mousterian period (of the Neanderthal men, stooped and beetle-browed). At 26 feet below the surface, he found the scattered bones of a child less than a year old who had died something like...