Long before written language, before cities, before any civilization we recognize, something remarkable was happening in the caves of what is now northern Iraq. A Neanderthal was buried — and near that burial, clusters of pollen from plants with real medicinal properties were left in the earth. Whether those plants were placed deliberately remains one of the most genuinely debated questions in prehistoric archaeology. But the evidence, contested as it is, points toward something extraordinary: a cousin species of our own, possibly practicing the earliest form of plant medicine ever documented.
What the evidence shows
- Neanderthal herbalism: Pollen clusters recovered from Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1960s C.E., near the burial now called Shanidar IV, included at least eight plant species — seven of which are still used today as herbal remedies, among them yarrow, ephedra, and groundsel.
- Shanidar Cave: A 2020 C.E. re-excavation of the site uncovered a new Neanderthal burial (Shanidar Z) with associated plant material, reopening serious scholarly debate and drawing renewed scientific attention to the site’s extraordinary preservation.
- El Sidrón site: Separate evidence from El Sidrón in northern Spain — dated to roughly 48,000 B.C.E. — found traces of poplar (a natural anti-inflammatory) and Penicillium rubens in Neanderthal dental calculus, suggesting some degree of intentional self-medication independent of the Shanidar findings.
Why this moment is so significant
To use a plant medicinally is to perform an act of applied reasoning: observe a symptom, apply a substance, track a result. That sequence — observation, intervention, assessment — is the skeleton of the scientific method. It did not begin in a laboratory, or even with Homo sapiens. If the Shanidar and El Sidrón evidence holds, it began with a species that went extinct roughly 40,000 years ago.
Yarrow, one of the plants associated with Shanidar IV, has documented pharmacological properties. It can slow bleeding and has measurable antimicrobial effects. Ephedra contains alkaloids that remain in use in modern respiratory medicine. These are not random plants. Whether their presence in a Neanderthal burial represents intentional placement, cultural significance, or something else entirely, their medicinal properties are real.
The broader picture of Neanderthal cognition has shifted considerably in recent decades. Genetic analysis has confirmed that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred. Neanderthals used pigments, made personal ornaments, and buried their dead — behaviors once assumed exclusive to modern humans. The possibility that they also maintained botanical knowledge fits a pattern of emerging evidence that treats Neanderthals not as primitive dead ends but as a closely related lineage with sophisticated relationships to their environment.
Herbalism did not begin or end with Neanderthals
It is worth situating this moment within a much longer arc. Non-human primates, including orangutans and chimpanzees, have been observed applying plants with medicinal properties to wounds and consuming them to address parasites. The capacity for botanical self-treatment appears to be an ancient feature of primate cognition, not a uniquely human invention.
After Neanderthals, the record becomes richer. Ötzi the Iceman, preserved in the Alps for over 5,000 years, carried medicinal herbs that appear to have been used to treat intestinal parasites. Sumerian clay tablets from roughly 5,000 years ago listed hundreds of medicinal plants including opium and myrrh. Ancient Egyptian texts such as the Papyrus Ebers documented more than 850 plant medicines — among them garlic, cannabis, aloe, and castor bean. Indian Ayurvedic traditions, Chinese pharmacopeias, and Greek medical writing all developed extensive, systematized herbalist knowledge across separate lineages of discovery.
What connects all of it — from a Neanderthal cave in Iraqi Kurdistan to a Bronze Age pharmacopeia in China — is something that looks very much like curiosity. Humans, and our closest relatives, have always noticed which plants helped and which ones harmed. That noticing is where medicine begins.
Lasting impact
The downstream consequences of early herbalism reach into nearly every system of medicine that followed. The World Health Organization estimates that roughly 80% of the world’s population relies on plant-based traditional medicine as a primary health resource. Many pharmaceutical compounds in common use today — aspirin, morphine, quinine, taxol — were derived directly from plants that preindustrial and ancient peoples had already identified as medicinally useful.
The continuity is not incidental. When researchers identify promising compounds in traditional medicinal plants, they are often following a trail of empirical observation that stretches back thousands of years — and possibly, in this case, to a species that preceded our own. Modern genomic research into Neanderthal cognition continues to reveal cognitive capacities once dismissed, making the herbalism evidence even more plausible to many scholars.
Indigenous botanical knowledge systems around the world — from the Amazon to the Himalayas to the Australian interior — represent living continuations of this same tradition. International frameworks for protecting traditional knowledge are still evolving, and much Indigenous botanical knowledge has been extracted without credit or compensation. That debt is part of the history of herbalism too.
Blindspots and limits
The Shanidar IV pollen evidence is genuinely disputed. The most widely cited alternative explanation — that the pollen was deposited by burrowing rodents common to the site — has not been fully ruled out, and many archaeologists regard the flower-burial hypothesis as unproven. The El Sidrón dental evidence is considered more robust by most researchers, but it too reflects a small sample and a single site. What the record cannot yet tell us is how widespread, consistent, or intentional Neanderthal plant use actually was — whether it was systematic knowledge passed between individuals, or isolated behavior we happen to have preserved.
Read more
For more on this story, see: History of herbalism — Wikipedia
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- U.K. cancer death rates down to their lowest level on record
- The Good News for Humankind archive on prehistory
About this article
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