The final resting place of the last Neanderthals may have been unearthed by fossil-hunters excavating deep inside a cave in Gibraltar.
Primitive stone tools and remnants from wood fires recovered from the vast Gorham's cave on the easternmost face of the Rock suggest Neanderthals found refuge there, and clung to life for thousands of years after they had died out elsewhere.
Carbon dating of charcoal fragments excavated alongside spear points and basic cutting tools indicates the cave was home to a group of around 15 Neanderthals at least 28,000 years ago, and possibly as recently as 24,000 years ago. Previously uncovered remains lead scientists to believe the Neanderthals died out in Europe and elsewhere some 35,000 years ago.
The discovery marks more clearly than ever before the time of death of our closest relative, and completes one of the most dramatic chapters in human evolution.
Today, Gorham's cave is perched on a cliff face lapped by the Mediterranean, but the view from the east-facing entrance was once of rolling sand dunes pocked with vegetation. A freshwater stream running down from the north led to the sea 4.8km away.
“For the Neanderthals, this was a great place to be. The view would have been breathtaking, and they would have literally been able to see where their next meal was coming from,” said Chris Stringer, a scientist on the project at the Natural History Museum in London. “The evidence supports the idea that this was one of their last survival spots, one of their final outposts.”
The sea level was around 100m lower in Neanderthal times as vast quantities of water were locked up in glaciers that encroached from the poles and smothered Scotland in sheets of ice 3.2km thick.
Clive Finlayson at the Gibraltar Museum said the Neanderthals probably survived in the region because of the stabilizing influence of the Atlantic on the local climate.
Elsewhere, glaciation caused violent lurches in climate that turned fertile pastures into barren wastelands.
But at Gorham's cave, and along the nearby coast, the climate would have been calmer, maintaining what Finlayson calls a “Mediterranean Serengeti,” with red deer, leopards and hyenas roaming between watering holes.
The discovery throws into doubt the theory that the arrival of modern humans was solely responsible for the demise of the Neanderthals, by outcompeting them for food or even engaging in the earliest acts of genocide. More likely, the Neanderthals were already struggling to adapt to rapid changes in crucial food resources such as vegetation and wild animals.
Modern humans and Neanderthals split from a common ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis, around 500,000 years ago when the power of fire was first harnessed.
From a foothold north of the Mediterranean, Homo heidelbergensis steadily evolved into the Neanderthals, while in Africa, the same species embarked on a different evolutionary path, one that ultimately gave rise to modern-day Homo sapiens. Remains of Neanderthals dating back as far as 400,000 years suggest a reasonably sophisticated species which crafted handtools and weapons and buried its dead.
The stone tools unearthed from Gorham's cave were discovered 2.5m beneath the soil towards the back of the 40m long cave where the Neanderthals had created a hearth. The collection includes basic knife edges used for butchering carcasses and scraping tools for working skins and hides, according to the journal Nature.
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