Churchill and his colleagues examined Shanidar 3, one of nine Neanderthals discovered between 1953 and 1960 in a cave in northeastern Iraq's Zagros Mountains. The team also ran experiments with a specially calibrated crossbow, which they used to deliver stone-pointed spears with different forces to simulate a thrusting spear and a long-range projectile weapon like a dart.


The weapons were thrust into pig and other animal carcasses. "Pigs make a pretty good model for Neandertal thoraces," Churchill told LiveScience. "The ribs are about the same stoutness and overall same size. And the musculature and skin thickness and things like that are pretty similar from what we can tell."


Then, the researchers compared the wounds created by the different scenarios, finding the thrusting spears did lots of damage, breaking multiple ribs.