Neanderthals of Gibraltar

The Neanderthals in Gibraltar were among the first to be discovered by modern scientists and may have been among the last of their species. According to a number of extinction hypotheses who emphasize regional differences, usually claiming the Iberian Peninsula acted as a “refuge” for the retreating Neanderthal populations and Gibraltar community as having been the last, existing until around 24,000 years ago.

The skull of a Neanderthal woman, discovered in a quarry in 1848, was only the second Neanderthal skull ever found and the first adult Neanderthal skull to be discovered, eight years before the discovery of the skull for which the species was named in Neandertal, Germany; had it been recognised as a separate species, it might have been called Calpican (or Gibraltarian) rather than Neanderthal Man. The skull of a Neanderthal child was discovered nearby in 1926. The Neanderthals are known to have occupied ten sites on the Gibraltar peninsula at the southern tip of Iberia, which may have had one of the densest areas of Neanderthal settlement of anywhere in Europe.

The caves in the Rock of Gibraltar that the Neanderthals inhabited have been excavated and have revealed a wealth of information about their lifestyle and the prehistoric landscape of the area. The peninsula stood on the edge of a fertile coastal plain, now submerged, that supported a wide variety of animals and plants which the Neanderthals exploited to provide a highly varied diet. Unlike northern Europe, which underwent massive swings in its climate and was largely uninhabitable for long periods, the far south of Iberia enjoyed a stable and mild climate for over 125,000 years. It became a refuge from the ice ages for animals, plants and Neanderthals, who survived there for possibly several thousand years longer than anywhere else. Around 24,000 years ago, however, the climate underwent abrupt changes which would have greatly disrupted the Gibraltar Neanderthals' food supply and may have stressed their population beyond recovery, leading to their final extinction.

The Gibraltar Neanderthals first came to light in 1848 during excavations in the course of the construction of a fortification called Forbes' Barrier at the northern end of the Rock of Gibraltar. The skull of a Neanderthal was discovered in Forbes' Quarry by Lieutenant Edmund Flint, though its exact provenance is unknown, and was the subject of a presentation to the Gibraltar Scientific Society by Lieutenant Flint in March 1848. It was not realised at the time that the skull, now known as Gibraltar 1, was of a separate species and it was not until 1862 that it was studied by palaeontologists George Busk and Hugh Falconer during a visit to Gibraltar. They gave a report on it to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1864 and proposed that the species be called Homo calpicus after Mons Calpe, the ancient name for Gibraltar. It was only later realised that the skull was a specimen of Homo neanderthalensis, which had been named for the Neanderthal 1 skull found in Germany in 1856. Busk described it as "characteristic of a race extending from the Rhine to the Pillars of Hercules", highlighting its importance as confirmation that the Neanderthal 1 specimen was genuinely a member of a distinct species and not simply a deformed Homo sapiens.

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