Gibraltar Man

Abstract

THE gift of this historic tooth of Neanderthal type from Gibraltar to the British Museum (Natural History) serves to recall the fact that it is only by little more than an accident that a certain primitive type of Homo is now known specifically as “Neanderthal” and not as Calpicus, from Calpè, an ancient name for Gibraltar ; for the first known example of Neanderthal man came to light in a rock-shelter, or the remains of a cave, in Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar, in 1848, nine years before the discovery of the type skull in the valley of the Neander in Germany. The history of the discovery was found by Col. E. R. Kenyon in 1910 in the minutes of the long defunct Gibraltar Scientific Society. The skull was presented to the Society by the finder, Lieut. Flint, its secretary ; but its remarkable and peculiar character was not appreciated until long after, when in 1862 it was sent to England by Capt. F. Brome, governor of the military prison, with a quantity of palaeontological material which he had obtained from the Genista cave, where he carried on investigations for some years. It was then examined by Mr. George Busk and Dr. G. H. Falconer, who immediately recognized its importance as a new and distinct type of Homo, the latter wishing to give it, as already mentioned, specific rank in classification. The skull has since been the subject of study by almost every anthropologist of note from Huxley to Keith ; and although it differs from the type in certain respects, and its age is not precisely determinable, all are agreed that it is a pleistocene skull belonging to the Neanderthal group. While some would regard the differences from the type as due to its sex (female) others hold that they are marks of an early and primitive character, such as have since been found in the Neander-thaloid skulls from Palestine. A similar skull, but of a child of five years of age, was found in 1926 by Miss D. Garrod in a recently discovered cave; and in the same stratum were flint implements of late Mousterian type. The original Gibraltar skull was presented by Mr. G. Busk to the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, where it is now exhibited.