the gibraltar neanderthals

1998 marked the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the “Gibraltar Skull” which was blasted out of Forbes’ Quarry on the North Face of the Rock of Gibraltar. The specimen was presented on the 3rd March, 1848, by Lieutenant Edmund Flint to the Gibraltar Scientific Society and the discovery nearly placed Gibraltar at the forefront of 19th Century early human studies. Fate determined that the significance of the skull was not realised and it remained undisclosed for another sixteen years. Had it been revealed earlier the human type known as Neanderthal, after the discovery of a skeleton in the Neander Valley in Germany eight years after the Gibraltar find, then the naming may have been very different. A second Neanderthal was excavated by Dorothy Garrod from a rock shelter known as Devil’s Tower, also on the North Face of the Rock, in 19 26. The remains were of a four-year old child.

In 1997 scientists from the United States and Germany extracted for the first time mitochondrial DNA from the 1856 Neander specimen. The pattern of DNA was shown to be significantly different from that of Modern Humans and indicated that the Neanderthal lineage probably began to split from ours around 600 thousand years ago.

Gibraltar was clearly a site of regular Neanderthal occupation for tens of thousands of years. Five sites with Neanderthal remains or the left overs of their occupation have now been identified in Gibraltar. These are the specimen sites, Forbes’ Quarry and Devil’s Tower, along with Ibex, Gorham’s and Vanguard Caves on the east side of Gibraltar.