At the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula lies the island of Gibraltar, a 6.7 km2 (2.6 mi2) island south of Spain. The island is currently home to some 32,000 people, yet humans and our ancestors have called the island home for millenia. This is evidenced by the several expeditions to the island which aimed to obtain fossils or other forms of evidence of the hominids who used to live there. Of particular interest is a cave on the island known as Gorham’s Cave, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; this cave is remarkable for being what may be one of the last-known habitations of the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis).
Now, a recent expedition to a sister cave close to Gorham’s, known as Vanguard Cave, revealed a segment that was sealed off by sand. Surrounding it were remains of different animals, some of which a team of researchers believe were brought there by Neanderthals. Researchers have identified the sand to be around 40,000 years old—meaning this new area of the cave had been sealed off from the rest of the world for roughly that same amount of time, and that it may contain as-of-yet undiscovered remnants of the last Neanderthals on Earth who may have called it home thousands of years ago. Their expeditions were detailed in a new press release by the Gibraltar National Museum.
Gibraltar National Museum director Clive Finlayson describes the find in communications with science website Live Science: “Given that the sand sealing the chamber was [40,000] years old, and that the chamber was therefore older, it must have been Neanderthals.”
The team who ventured into the depths of this new cave area, which was some 13 m (43 ft) long, found remains of wild lynx, hyenas, and whelk, which are a type of sea snail. Given the distance of the cave from the sea during that time, the researchers believed the Neanderthal residents of the cave must have brought it inland and inside the cave.
Given the fact that this isn’t the first time Neanderthal presence was found in the Gorham’s Cave Complex, which contain both Gorham’s and Vanguard Cave, researchers are eager to see what remains buried beneath the 40,000-year-old sand covering the newly-discovered segment of cave.
Scientists estimate that Neanderthals went extinct some 40,000 years ago, which coincides with the date of the new sealed cave segment. If so, the cave could be one of the last bastions of our cousins in the human family tree.
(For more information about our cousins in the human family tree, check out our pieces on how they may have crossed a different Arabian peninsula than the one we recognize today, as well as how some of them may have left their traces on a unique group of people from the Philippines.)
References
- Jarus, O. (2021, September 29). Secret cave chamber may be one of the last Neanderthal hideouts. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/cave-chamber-gibraltar-last-neanderthal-hideout
- Recent discovery at vanguard cave. (n.d.). Gibraltar National Museum. Retrieved September 30, 2021, from https://www.gibmuseum.gi/news/recent-discovery-at-vanguard-cave-335
