page_title: Neanderthals in Gibraltar
section_title: Occupation sites
hierarchical_section_title: Neanderthals in Gibraltar / Occupation sites
caption_attribution_description: Čeština: Pohled z moře na Gorhamovu jeskyni na východní straně Gibraltarské skály English: View of Gorham's Cave, a sea cave in the east face of the Rock of Gibraltar, Gibraltar.
context_page_description: The Neanderthals in Gibraltar were among the first to be discovered by modern scientists and have been among the most well studied of their species according to a number of extinction studies which emphasize regional differences, usually claiming the Iberian Peninsula partially acted as a “refuge” for the shrinking Neanderthal populations and the Gibraltar community of Neanderthals as having been one of many dwindling communities of archaic human populations, existing just until around 42,000 years ago. Many other Neanderthal communities went extinct around the same time.
  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 rather than Neanderthal Man. The skull of a Neanderthal child was discovered nearby in 1926.
context_section_description: The limestone massif of the Rock of Gibraltar is riddled with caves – its ancient name, Calpe, means "hollow" – and it was here that archaeologists focused their efforts to find sites of Neanderthal occupation. Ten such sites have been discovered so far, of which the most important are five caves on the eastern side of the Rock: Ibex Cave, high up on the east side, which was only discovered in 1975 due to being buried under the wind-blown sands of the Great Gibraltar Sand Dune, and four sea caves near sea level on the south-eastern flank, Boathoist Cave, Vanguard Cave, Gorham's Cave and Bennett's Cave.
  Large-scale excavations in 1947–54 by John d'Arcy Waechter showed that Gorham's Cave had been occupied for over 100,000 years during the Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic and Holocene epochs. Further excavations have been carried out in Gorham's, Vanguard and Ibex Caves since 1994 as part of the Gibraltar Museum's Gibraltar Caves Project. The excavations have revealed possibly the best evidence of a Neanderthal landscape found anywhere, buried under many metres of sand, fallen stalactites, bat guano and other debris that has fortuitously preserved an abundance of palaeontological evidence on the cave floors. The finds have enabled palaeontologists to reconstruct the lifestyles of the occupants and their environment in considerable detail.
  The finds in Gorham's Cave include charcoal, bones, stone tools and burnt seeds dating from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic periods, while Vanguard Cave contains Pleistocene and Middle Palaeolithic deposits. When Ibex Cave was discovered in 1975, fifty artifacts from the Middle Pleistocene period were found on the surface along with vertebrate remains and shells. Neanderthal tools were found in an excavation carried out there in 1994 by the Gibraltar Caves Project, though occupation of the cave seems to have been sporadic. Most of the stone tools appear to have been deposited during a single period of occupation, perhaps as short as a single day.
  In July 2012, archaeologists discovered an engraving in Gorham's Cave, buried under 39,000-year-old sediments, which has been called "the oldest known example of abstract art". Consisting of a series of intersecting lines, the engraving is located about 100 metres (330 ft) inside the cave on a ledge that is thought to have been used by Neanderthals as a sleeping place. Its meaning (or whether it had any meaning) is not known but researchers have described it as providing the first evidence that Neanderthals had the cognitive ability to produce abstract act. The engraving was clearly made deliberately, rather than being an accidental by-product of another process such as cutting meat or fur, and would have taken a significant amount of effort to carve into the dolomite rock of the cave.
caption: The entrance to Gorham's Cave on the south-eastern flank of the Rock of Gibraltar
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 450D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:12:05 20:42:33", "Image ExifOffset": "208", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "746", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6637", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:07:03 10:42:13", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:07:03 10:42:13", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "352741/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "415241/62500", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "20", "EXIF SubSecTime": "38", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "38", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "38", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4272", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2848", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2136000/439", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "356000/73", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}