Neanderthals in Gibraltar
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 claiming the Iberian Peninsula 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 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. 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, although not the last place of possible habitation.
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 varied diet. Unlike northern Europe, which underwent massive swings in its climate and was 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 and Neanderthals, the latter of which most did not survive there for thousand years longer than any other habitation site. Around 42,000 years ago, the climate underwent cycles of abrupt change which would have disrupt the Gibraltar Neanderthals' food supply and may have stressed their population beyond recovery, leading to their aggregated extinction in areas of Europe with similar climates.
In Gibraltar, but in other less well studied areas, did the Homo Neanderthalensis leave its last footprint of existence circa 40,000 BCE. 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, 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 realised that the skull was a specimen of Homo neanderthalensis, 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 a deformed Homo sapiens. The skull was the first Neanderthal adult cranium to be discovered and, although small, is nearly complete. In 1926, a second Neanderthal skull was found by Dorothy Garrod at a rock shelter named Devil's Tower close to Forbes' Quarry; this fossil, known as Gibraltar 2, is much less complete than the Gibraltar 1 skull and has been identified as that of a four-year-old child. Further excavations at the two sites are infeasible. Quarrying at Forbes' Quarry has meant that it has been denuded of Pleistocene sediments while Devil's Tower is directly under the North Front of the Rock of Gibraltar and is one of the most dangerous places on the entire peninsula due to frequent rockfalls; the limestone massif of the Rock of Gibraltar is riddled with caves – its ancient name, 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, only discovered in 1975 due to being buried under the wind-blown sands of the Great Gibraltar Sand Dune, 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 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, stone tools and burnt
Ed Davis (Royal Marines officer)
Lieutenant General Edward Grant Martin Davis, is a senior Royal Marines officer. He was Commandant General Royal Marines from December 2011 to June 2014, he was the Deputy Commander of NATO's Allied Land Command at Turkey. He became Governor of Gibraltar in January 2016. Davis was born in Herefordshire, he was educated at Coleraine Academical Institution, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland and King's College London. Davis was commissioned into the Royal Marines in 1981 and joined 40 Commando with whom he undertook a six-month tour in the Falkland Islands and a six-month tour in Cyprus. In 1996, he attended the Army Staff Course at Staff College, Camberley. In the same year, he became Chief of Staff at the Headquarters of the Combat Service Support Group in which role he took part in the Bosnian War, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the Commander of the UK’s Amphibious Forces in 2007 and was deployed to Afghanistan as Chief of Joint Effects for ISAF. He was appointed Commander of 3 Commando Brigade in January 2010 and again deployed to Afghanistan – this time as the Commander of Task Force Helmand.
He became Commandant General Royal Marines in December 2011. He was promoted to major general on 10 January 2012, with seniority from 28 November 2011. Davis succeeded Lieutenant General Gordon Messenger as Deputy Commander of NATO Allied Land Command -Izmir in July 2014. On 1 October 2015, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced that Davis was the designated Governor of Gibraltar after the resignation of Sir James Dutton. 14 June 1996 – Appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire 31 December 2005 – Advanced to an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2006 New Year Honours 23 March 2012 – Advanced to a Commander of the Order of the British Empire "in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Afghanistan during the period 1 April 2011 to 30 September 2011". 14 June 2014 – Appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 2014 Birthday Honours. 5 August 2016 – Appointed a Knight of the Order of St John by Queen Elizabeth II. RM Biography
The Crown
The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their sub-divisions. Ill-defined, the term has different meanings depending on context, it is used to designate the monarch in either a personal capacity, as Head of the Commonwealth, or as the king or queen of his or her realms. It can refer to the rule of law. A corporation sole, the Crown is the legal embodiment of executive and judicial governance in the monarchy of each country; these monarchies are united by the personal union of their monarch. The concept of the Crown developed first in England as a separation of the literal crown and property of the kingdom from the person and personal property of the monarch, it spread through English and British colonisation and is now rooted in the legal lexicon of the United Kingdom, its Crown dependencies, the other 15 independent realms. It is not to be confused with any physical crown, such as those of the British regalia; the term is found in various expressions such as "Crown land", which some countries refer to as "public land" or "state land".
The concept of the Crown took form under the feudal system. Though not used this way in all countries that had this system, in England, all rights and privileges were bestowed by the ruler. Land, for instance, was granted by the Crown to lords in exchange for feudal services and they, in turn, granted the land to lesser lords. One exception to this was common socage—owners of land held as socage held it subject only to the Crown; when such lands become owner-less they are said to escheat. Bona vacantia is the royal prerogative; the monarch is the living embodiment of the Crown and, as such, is regarded as the personification of the state. The body of the reigning sovereign thus holds two distinct personas in constant coexistence: that of a natural-born human being and that of the state as accorded to him or her through law; the terms the state, the Crown, the Crown in Right of, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of, similar are all synonymous and the monarch's legal personality is sometimes referred to as the relevant jurisdiction's name.
As such, the king or queen is the employer of all government officials and staff, the guardian of foster children, as well as the owner of all state lands and equipment, state owned companies, the copyright for government publications. This is all in his or her position as sovereign, not as an individual; the Crown represents the legal embodiment of executive and judicial governance. While the Crown's legal personality is regarded as a corporation sole, it can, at least for some purposes, be described as a corporation aggregate headed by the monarch. Whilst the Crown refers to the monarch, this reference is made in re the monarch this reference is to the monarch in their capacity as monarch, does not refer to that individual in their totality of ownership interests and actions; the monarch can act in a private capacity. This duality of characterisation can be illustrated in several ways. In property ownership for example, although both are royal residences, Buckingham Palace is the property of the Crown via the Crown Estate whilst Balmoral Castle is the property of Elizabeth II and not of the Crown.
The latter property can be alienated by the Queen, whereas any disposition of the former property would need to be done via instrument of government as an act of state. The Queen's bank accounts at Coutts contain components of her private wealth only, whilst the resources of the monarch acting as the Crown are dispensed from HM Treasury and the Crown Estate to the Royal Household. A third example is in employment relationships; however those who assist as employees of the monarch as the Crown do so on employment from the Royal Household, the official department charged with supporting the monarch. Those who a
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. It is bordered to the north by Spain; the landscape is dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar at the foot of, a densely populated town area, home to over 30,000 people Gibraltarians. In 1704, Anglo-Dutch forces captured Gibraltar from Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession on behalf of the Habsburg claim to the Spanish throne; the territory was ceded to Great Britain in perpetuity under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. During World War II it was an important base for the Royal Navy as it controlled the entrance and exit to the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, only 8 miles wide at this naval choke point, it remains strategically important. Today Gibraltar's economy is based on tourism, online gambling, financial services and cargo ship refuelling; the sovereignty of Gibraltar is a point of contention in Anglo-Spanish relations because Spain asserts a claim to the territory. Gibraltarians rejected proposals for Spanish sovereignty in a 1967 referendum and, in a 2002 referendum, the idea of shared sovereignty was rejected.
Evidence of Neanderthal habitation in Gibraltar from around 50,000 years ago has been discovered at Gorham's Cave. The caves of Gibraltar continued to be used by Homo sapiens after the final extinction of the Neanderthals. Stone tools, ancient hearths and animal bones dating from around 40,000 years ago to about 5,000 years ago have been found in deposits left in Gorham's Cave. Numerous potsherds dating from the Neolithic period have been found in Gibraltar's caves of types typical of the Almerian culture found elsewhere in Andalusia around the town of Almería, from which it takes its name. There is little evidence of habitation in the Bronze Age, when people had stopped living in caves. During ancient times, Gibraltar was regarded by the peoples of the Mediterranean as a place of religious and symbolic importance; the Phoenicians were present for several centuries since around 950 BC using Gorham's Cave as a shrine to the genius loci, as did the Carthaginians and Romans after them. Gibraltar was known as Mons Calpe, a name of Phoenician origin.
Mons Calpe was considered by the ancient Greeks and Romans as one of the Pillars of Hercules, after the Greek legend of the creation of the Strait of Gibraltar by Heracles. There is no known archaeological evidence of permanent settlements from the ancient period, they settled at the head of the bay in. The town of Carteia, near the location of the modern Spanish town of San Roque, was founded by the Phoenicians around 950 BC on the site of an early settlement of the native Turdetani people. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Gibraltar came under the control of the Vandals, who crossed into Africa at the invitation of Boniface, the Count of the territory; the area formed part of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania for 300 years, from 414 until 711 AD. Following a raid in 710, a predominantly Berber army under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed from North Africa in April 711 and landed somewhere in the vicinity of Gibraltar. Tariq's expedition led to the Islamic conquest of most of the Iberian peninsula.
Mons Calpe was renamed the Mount of Tariq, subsequently corrupted into Gibraltar. In 1160 the Almohad Sultan Abd al-Mu'min ordered that a permanent settlement, including a castle, be built, it received the name of Medinat al-Fath. The Tower of Homage of the Moorish Castle remains standing today. From 1274 onwards, the town was fought over and captured by the Nasrids of Granada, the Marinids of Morocco and the kings of Castile. In 1462 Gibraltar was captured by 1st Duke of Medina Sidonia. After the conquest, Henry IV of Castile assumed the additional title of King of Gibraltar, establishing it as part of the comarca of the Campo Llano de Gibraltar. Six years Gibraltar was restored to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who sold it in 1474 to a group of 4350 conversos from Cordova and Seville and in exchange for maintaining the garrison of the town for two years, after which time they were expelled, returning to their home towns or moving on to other parts of Spain. In 1501 Gibraltar passed back to the Spanish Crown, Isabella I of Castile issued a Royal Warrant granting Gibraltar the coat of arms that it still uses.
In 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet, representing the Grand Alliance, captured the town of Gibraltar on behalf of the Archduke Charles of Austria in his campaign to become King of Spain. Subsequently most of the population left the town with many settling nearby; as the Alliance's campaign faltered, the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht was negotiated, which ceded control of Gibraltar to Britain to secure Britain's withdrawal from the war. Unsuccessful attempts by Spanish monarchs to regain Gibraltar were made with the siege of 1727 and again with the Great Siege of Gibraltar, during the American War of Independence. Gibraltar became a key base for the Royal Navy and played an important role prior to the Battle of Trafalgar and during the Crimean War of 1854–56, because of its strategic location. In the 18th century, the peacetime military garrison fluctuated in numbers from a minimum of 1,100 to a maximum of 5,000; the first half of the 19th century saw a significant increase of population to more t
Umayyad conquest of Hispania
The Umayyad conquest of Hispania was the initial expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate over Hispania extending from 711 to 788. The conquest resulted in the destruction of the Visigothic Kingdom and the establishment of the independent Emirate of Córdoba under Abd ar-Rahman I, who completed the unification of Muslim-ruled Iberia, or al-Andalus; the conquest marks the westernmost expansion of both the Umayyad Caliphate and Muslim rule into Europe. During the caliphate of the Umayyad Caliph Al-Walid I, forces led by Tariq ibn Ziyad disembarked in early 711 in Gibraltar at the head of an army consisting of Berbers, he campaigned his way northward after the decisive Battle of Guadalete against the usurper Roderic, after which he was reinforced by an Arab force led by his superior wali Musa ibn Nusair. By 717, the combined Arab-Berber force had crossed the Pyrenees into Provence; the historian al-Tabari transmits a tradition attributed to the Caliph Uthman who stated that the road to Constantinople was through Hispania, "Only through Spain can Constantinople be conquered.
If you conquer you will share the reward of those who conquer." The conquest of Hispania followed the conquest of North Africa. Walter Kaegi calls Tabari's tradition dubious, states that the conquest of far western reaches of the Mediterranean was motivated by exploiting military and religious opportunities, he considers that it was not a shift in direction due to the Muslims failing to conquer Constantinople in 678. Historian Jessica Coope of University of Nebraska considers that the pre-modern Islamic thought believed that the conquest of dar al-harb was motivated by belief that others were better off under Islamic rule and the belief in the superiority of the concept of Islamic society. What happened in Iberia in the early 8th century is uncertain. There is one contemporary Christian source, the Chronicle of 754, regarded as reliable but vague. There are no contemporary Muslim accounts, Muslim compilations, such as that of Al-Maqqari from the 17th century, reflect ideological influence; this paucity of early sources means.
The manner of King Roderic's ascent to the throne is unclear. Regnal lists, which cite Achila and omit Roderic, are consistent with the contemporary account of civil war. Numismatic evidence suggests a division of royal authority, with several coinages being struck, that Achila II remained king of the Tarraconsense and Septimania until circa 713; the nearly contemporary Chronicle of 754 describes Roderic as a usurper who earned the allegiance of other Goths by deception, while the less reliable late-ninth century Chronicle of Alfonso III shows a clear hostility towards Oppa, bishop of Seville and a brother of Wittiza, who appears in an unlikely heroic dialogue with Pelagius. There is a story of one Julian, count of Ceuta, whose wife or daughter was raped by Roderic and who sought help from Tangier. However, these stories are not included in the earliest accounts of the conquest. According to the chronicler Ibn Abd-el-Hakem, the Tangier governor Tariq ibn Ziyad led a raiding force 1,700 men strong from North Africa to southern Spain in 711.
However, 12,000 seems a more accurate figure. Ibn Abd-el-Hakem reports, one and a half centuries that "the people of Andalus did not observe them, thinking that the vessels crossing and recrossing were similar to the trading vessels which for their benefit plied backwards and forwards", they defeated the Visigothic army, led by King Roderic, in a decisive battle at Guadalete in 712. Tariq's forces were reinforced by those of his superior, the wali Musa ibn Nusair, both took control of most of Iberia with an army estimated at 10,000–15,000 combatants. According to the Muslim historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Iberia was first invaded some sixty years earlier during the caliphate of Uthman. Another prominent Muslim historian of the 13th century, Ibn Kathir, quoted the same narration, pointing to a campaign led by Abd Allah bin Nafi al Husayn and Abd Allah bin Nafi al Abd al Qays in 32 AH. However, this putative invasion is not accepted by modern historians; the first expedition led by Tariq was made up of Berbers who had themselves only come under Muslim influence.
It is probable that this army represented a continuation of a historic pattern of large-scale raids into Iberia dating to the pre–Islamic period, hence it has been suggested that actual conquest was not planned. Both the Chronicle of 754 and Muslim sources speak of raiding activity in previous years, Tariq's army may have been present for some time before the decisive battle, it has been argued that this possibility is supported by the fact that the army was led by a Berber and that Musa, the Umayyad Governor of North Africa, only arrived the following year – the governor had not stooped to lead a mere raid, but hurried across once the unexpected triumph became clear. The historian Abd al-Wāḥid Dhannūn Ṭāhā mentions that several Arab-Muslim writers mention the fact that Tariq has decided to cross the strait without informing his superior and wali Musa; the Chronicle of 754 states that many townspeople fled to the hills rather than defend their cities, which might support the view that this was expected to be a temporary raid rather than a permanent change of government.
The Chronicle of 754 stated that "the entire army of the Goths, which had come with him fraudulently and in rivalry out of hopes of the Kingship, fled". This is the only contemporary acco
Gibraltar 2
Gibraltar 2 known as Devil's Tower Child, represented five skull fragments of a female Neanderthal child discovered in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The discovery of the fossils at the Devil's Tower Mousterian rock shelter was made by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in 1926, it represented the second excavation of a Neanderthal skull in Gibraltar, after Gibraltar 1, the second Neanderthal skull found. In the early twenty-first century, Gibraltar 2 underwent reconstruction. Prehistoric man resided in Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory at the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula; the evidence was first found in the Devil's Tower Road area, at Forbes' Quarry, in the north face of the Rock of Gibraltar. This was the site of the 1848 discovery of the first Neanderthal skull by Lieutenant Edmund Flint of the Royal Artillery; the fossil, an adult female skull, is referred to as the Gibraltar Skull. Neanderthals were unknown at the time. Lieutenant Flint, secretary of the Gibraltar Scientific Society, presented his discovery to the organisation on 3 March 1848.
Eight years in 1856, fossils were discovered in a cave of the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany. Those remains were described in 1864 as Homo neanderthalensis by Professor William King of Queen's College, now University College; that year, the Gibraltar Skull was sent to England and exhibited by George Busk at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, with its similarity to the Neander Valley fossils noted. However, it wasn't until the early twentieth century that it was realized that Gibraltar 1 was the skull of a Neanderthal. If the skull's significance had been understood in the nineteenth century, Neanderthal Man would have been termed "Gibraltar Man". Additional evidence of Neanderthal occupation in Gibraltar was found at the Devil's Tower Mousterian rock shelter at the north face of the Rock of Gibraltar. Devil's Tower was a seventeenth century watchtower, located at the eastern end of Devil's Tower Road; the archaeological site was discovered by Abbé Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil, who had recommended investigation.
Breuil, a French paleontologist and archaeologist, is renowned for his expertise on prehistoric cave art. The excavations at the Devil's Tower cave started in November 1925 and continued until December 1926 in three phases. In 1926, the skull of a Neanderthal child was discovered by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod. Garrod, who had studied with Breuil in Paris, went on to perform archaeological excavations in France, Palestine and Bulgaria, she was the first female professor at the University of Oxford. In addition, in 1939, Garrod was elected to the Disney Chair. Garrod found five skull fragments which were described by the archaeologist and others in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1928; the five fragments were maxillary, temporal and mandibular. Mousterian flake stone tools were found near the child's remains; the skull of the female Neanderthal child is known as Devil's Tower Child. In a study described in 1993 in the Journal of Human Evolution, the striation pattern of the dental enamel of the Devil's Tower Child fossil was compared to that of modern hunter-gatherers and medieval individuals from Spain.
It was found. Gibraltar 2 had a high number of striations. Further, the ratio of horizontal to vertical striations suggested that Gibraltar 2 may have been carnivorous; the child is estimated to have been about four years old at the time of death. By 2008, the face of the Devil's Tower Child had been reconstructed at the University of Zurich by means of computer-assisted paleoanthropology; this involved using computed tomography to perform volume data acquisition of the five skull fragments unearthed by Garrod in 1926. The five cranial fragments were transformed with the software FoRM-IT into virtual 3D images. With the five virtual images suspended in anatomical space according to scientific criteria, the missing fragments were replaced with mirror images of the excavated fragments. By means of laser stereolithography, the virtual reconstruction of the face and skull of the Devil's Tower Child was converted to a physical model; the soft tissues were approximated using 3D Thin Plate Splining with data from a modern child.
Plasticine modelling clay was accordingly applied on the physical model to simulate soft tissue. The final model of Gibraltar 2 was cast. At the end of the 20th century, it was believed that the Neanderthals disappeared c. 35,000 years ago. In 2006, radiocarbon dating of charcoal from Gorham's Cave, suggested that Neanderthals survived in southern Spain and Gibraltar at least to 28,000 BP, well after the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe c. 45,000 years ago. More new decontaminated radiocarbon dating suggests Neanderthals had vacated Gibraltar by 42,000 BP, earlier than elsewhere in Europe. Computer-Assisted Paleoanthropology of Gibraltar 2
Gibraltar 1
Gibraltar 1 is the specimen name of a Neanderthal skull known as the Gibraltar Skull found at Forbes' Quarry in Gibraltar and presented to the Gibraltar Scientific Society by its Secretary, Lieutenant Edmund Henry Réné Flint on 3 March 1848. Its discovery predates that of the original Neanderthal discovery. Found more than ten years before the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and eight years prior to the famous discovery in the Neander Valley, the significance of the find was not understood at the time, the skull was labelled as "an ancient human, died before the universal flood" and lay forgotten inside a cupboard at the Garrison Library for many years. After the publication of Origin of Species, a renewed interest in the fossil human remains led to the skull being brought out of obscurity and presented at a meeting in the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1864. Darwin was not present, but the skull was examined by both Darwin and Thomas Huxley, who concluded the skull was that of an extinct human species.
Darwin did. A cast of the skull can be viewed at the Gibraltar Museum – the original is on display in the Human Evolution gallery of the Natural History Museum in London; the original find was done in a time where the palaeontological dating was still in its infancy, no stratigraphic information was supplied with the skull, making dating at best guesswork. Another specimen from a different locale on Gibraltar has however been dated to between 30 thousand to 50 thousand years old; the skull is that of an adult woman with typical Neanderthal features. While the skull was one of the first to be found, it was possibly from one of the last surviving Neanderthal populations; until the late twentieth century, it was believed that the last Neanderthals disappeared about 35,000 years ago. However, studies have suggested that Neanderthals survived in southern Iberia and Gibraltar to less than 30,000 years before the present. Radiocarbon dating performed on charcoal in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar in 2006 suggests that Neanderthals lived there 24,000 to 28,000 years ago, well after the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe 40,000 years ago.
Vanguard Cave and Gorham's Cave are still the sites of active archaeological excavation in 2012. These caves may have represented the refugium of Gibraltar's Neanderthals. Engis 2 Gibraltar 2 Neanderthal Neanderthal 1 List of fossil sites List of human evolution fossils History of Gibraltar
Gibraltar portal 
