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CHAPTER XIII

GIBRALTAR MAN

O specimen of the Neanderthal type has a more remarkable history than the Gibraltar cranium. In 1910 Colonel E. R. Keynon, then in command of the Royal Engineers, Gibraltar, discovered from the minute book of the long-defunct "Gibraltar Scientific Society" that this cranium was brought to light in 1848 and presented to the Museum of the Society by the Secretary, Lieutenant Flint. The Gibraltar cranium was thus the first discovery of the Neanderthal type of man, the famous specimen having been found nine years later, in 1857. The Gibraltar find is of the utmost value for two reasons (1) the face and base of the cranium are better preserved than in any other specimen yet discovered; (2) because, at least in the opinion of the writer, it is of a more primitive type than any yet described, and appears to bridge the gulf between the ancient man of Java (Pithecanthropus erectus) and the typical Neanderthal man. It seems to be Early Neanderthal or Pre-Neanderthal.

In 1862 the cranium came to England with an

extensive collection of the remains of animals which had been excavated in the Genista cave at Gibraltar by Captain Brome, Superintendent of the Gaol. Captain Brome's patriotism on behalf of Science led to his being ignominously and most unjustly dismissed the service because his pioneer discoveries had been made by the aid of prisoners under his charge. The collection which reached England under those inauspicious circumstances was examined and described by two remarkably skilled men-Mr. George Busk and Dr. Hugh Falconer. Both were struck with the human cranium. Falconer, observing that certain features distinguished it from the modern type of cranium, proposed to recognize it as a type of a new variety of mankind, and to name the variety Homo Calpicus-from Calfé, the old name of Gibraltar. 1868 Busk presented the cranium to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, where it is now preserved. It has received the attention. of anthropologists from the days of Huxley, Broca, Quatrefages and Hamy to more recent days, when it has been studied by Macnamara, Klaatsch, Schwalbe, Sollas, and Sera. The point on which all are now agreed is that the Homo Calpicus belongs to the Neanderthal type of Pleistocene man.

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All the evidence relating to the antiquity of this specimen is indirect. The only certain point is that it was quarried out of the terrace under

the north face of the rock, at a site then known as Forbes Quarry. The nature of the terrace we know; the accompanying section from a recent paper by Mr. H. D. Acland will give a good idea

Fig. 23. Section of a talus or terrace at Gibraltar of similar formation to the one in which the famous skull was found. (H. D. Acland.)

of the terrace or talus formations at Gibraltar. The terrace is formed by weathering and erosion of the face of the limestone cliff; the chips, which fall from the cliff, are welded together to form a conglomerate at the base. Mixed with the limestone chips is an addition of fine wind-blown sand

from the neighbouring shore. A petrified mass of sandstone breccia still fills the nasal cavities of the Gibraltar cranium. Its rock-like consistence defies removal. The part of the terrace in which the cranium was found was probably at a former period the floor of a cave. Part of a cave still exists behind the site of the discovery. The floor of this cave was explored by Dr. W. H. L. Duckworth, of Cambridge, in 1911; he found ten successive layers of stalagmite, and a layer of breccia or conglomerate 4 feet thick on the floor. No fossil remains were discovered by him. The terrace formation is of the same nature as the cave strata of the Dordogne, but it is impossible at the present time to find the exact geological period. It is certainly a Pleistocene formation, and very probably older than the cave strata in the Dordogne assigned to the Mousterien Period. Professors A. C. Ramsay and James Geikie, who investigated the geology of Gibraltar in 1877, saw evidence of a cold period in these terrace formations of breccia. The fauna found in the Genista cave by Captain Brome and described by Busk and Falconer, is very similar to that found with the Heidelberg jaw in the sands of Mauer. Rhinoceros Etruscus was present as at Mauer, and the fauna indicates an early part of the Pleistocene Period. In a cave at Gibraltar Dr. Duckworth found stone implements of the type used in France during the Mousterien Age.

The geological evidence permits one to say that the conditions of life at Gibraltar at the beginning of the Pleistocene Period were such as make it probable that man may have lived there then. The real evidence of antiquity must be sought for in the skull itself. The cranial capacity is under 1100 cubic centimetres-200 to 300 less than in the examples of Neanderthal man found elsewhere with the possible exception of one Krapina specimen. Although the size of the brain has not shown a progressive increase with evolution, still we must regard a small brain cavity in a primitive. type of skull as an indication of antiquity. The total length of the skull is 192 mm., the brain making up 164 mm. of this amount. In the Neanderthal skull the total length was 203 mm., with a brain length of 175. The proportion of the thickness of bone is therefore greater than in the Neanderthal skull. The width of the Gibraltar brain is 130 mm., the skull 142. The width or cephalic index of the skull is thus 74 per cent of the length. There is a slight indication of the brachycephalic character as seen in Krapina crania. It is, however, in the cerebral height that the primitive nature of this skull is evident. The height, according to the writer's method of measurement, is only 88 mm., 10 to 15 mm. less than in the other Neanderthal crania, with the possible exception of some of the Krapina fragments.

The writer was at first inclined to explain the