Gibraltar 1 Neanderthal Skull
About 50,000 years old
In the Human Evolution gallery a small, heavy browed skull looks out from its case with the calm of something that has waited a very long time to be understood. It belonged to an adult Neanderthal woman who lived in a cave on the Rock of Gibraltar around fifty thousand years ago. The face is broad, the nose opening large, the forehead low and sloping, and above the eye sockets runs a continuous ridge of bone. Yet the braincase behind it is as big as ours, a reminder that these were people, not brutes.
Compare it with the modern human skull displayed nearby. Neanderthal skulls are longer from front to back and have a distinctive bulge at the rear. The face projects forward in the middle, and the cheekbones sweep back rather than sitting flat. There is no chin. These features are thought to be adaptations to a cold climate and to a life of heavy chewing and tool use with the teeth. This specimen is remarkably complete, and the museum has scanned it to reconstruct the brain and the inner ear.
The skull was found in 1848 at Forbes' Quarry in Gibraltar and presented to the local scientific society, where it sat unremarked for years. Only after the discovery of the Neander Valley skeleton in Germany in 1856 did anyone realise its importance, which is why we speak of Neanderthals rather than Gibraltarians. It was brought to London in 1864 and shown to Darwin, and it remains the first adult Neanderthal skull ever discovered, older in the history of science than the specimen that gave the species its name.
Did You Know? Had the Gibraltar find been recognised in 1848, we would probably call the species Calpicans, after the ancient name of the Rock.
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