THE NEW CAVE SKULL

Hokitika Guardian, 27 August 1926, Page 3

THE NEW CAVE SKULL

Portions of a human skull including the frontal bone, belonging to tlie mysterious Neanderthal race that vanished from the earth about 25,000 years ago, have been discovered at Devil’s Tower, Gibraltar, by Daisy G. Gurrod, of Oxford University. The hones were buried at a depth of ten ieet and with them were the rude stone implements used by these cave men of prehistoric Europe. The discovery is regarded by anthropologists as being of considerable importance, because it corroborates the data of a similar discoverv made at Gibraltar in 1848.

Ibe Gibraltar skull brought to light 78 years ago was a historic event, •since it gave the first clue to a branch ol the human race very different from people ol to-day. But this significance of the skull was not realised until 1856, when a skeleton of the same peculiar type was unearthed at the Neanderthal region in Prussia. This Neanderthal skeleton was so strange that it was at first regarded as the body ol a man misshapen by some terrible disease or deformity, hut later finds proved the existence of ail entire race with large flat skulls; great ridges over the brows ; snout-like noses, probably unlike any noses that we have any conception of; thick, clumsy joints; heads carried heavily bent forward.

The remains of this type of human being have been found in widely scattered places in Europe, and evidence indicates that the race existed for some 50,000 years in tho era before the last great ice age. The first Gibraltar skull could he dated no more exactly than to say that it belonged to tho Neanderthal race of the Alouslerian age. It is possible that this new skull will enable anthropologists to find out more definitely when, why, and how these extinct people made tlieir cave homes in Southern Spain.