Researchers have found a new chamber in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been sealed off for at least 40,000 years from the world and the new discovery could explore more about the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who are believed to have lived in the area for thousand centuries.
Earlier in 2012, experts began excavating and examining part of Gorham’s Cave complex called Vanguard cave to note its true dimensions and to see whether the cave contained chambers and passages that had been plugged by sand.
Last month the team led by evolutionary biologist Prof Clive Finlayson who serves as the Director of the Gibraltar National Museum, discovered a gap in the sediment, which they excavated and crawled through. The discovery led them to a space 13 meters in the roof of the cave where stalactites hung from the ceiling and broken rocks suggested damages from an ancient earthquake.
Finlayson said, “It’s quite a chamber. In a way, it’s almost like discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun; you’re going into a space that no one’s been into for 40,000 years. It’s quite sobering, really.”
There were seen leg bone of a lynx, bones from a hyena, and the large wing bone of a griffon vulture scattered across the chamber’s surface.
Finlayson said, “Something dragged things into there a long time ago. We’ve also found six or seven examples of scratched claw marks on the walls of the cave. You’d normally associate that kind of claw mark with bears – and we do have bear remains in the cave, but they look a bit small to me. I wonder whether that lynx whose femur we found was actually scratching on the walls.”
He added that although the bones which showed no cuts or marks consistent with human intervention are interesting in themselves, the team also discovered a large dog whelk shell that raises tantalizing possibilities.
Describing the discovered chamber the professor said that the bit of the cave was probably 20 meters above sea level today, so it clearly implied that somebody had taken it up there some time before 40,000 years ago. He added that the cave chamber is already a hint that people had been up there.
Elsewhere in the caves, the team has recovered ample evidence of Neanderthal occupation, from hearths and stone tools to the remains of butchered animals including red deer, ibex, seals, and dolphins. Earlier about four years ago, the researchers came across the milk tooth of a Neanderthal child in an area frequented by hyenas.
“We’re still looking there, but there was no occupation by Neanderthals on that level, so we suspect that the hyenas got the kid and killed him or her and dragged her into the back of the cave,” adding that his team is looking to see if there is any other part of that child’s body left there.
The team is hopeful that their dig down from the apex of the cave could lead to side chambers and perhaps even the odd burial site.
Finlayson said, “One of the things that we’ve found on many levels of this cave is clear evidence of occupation – campfires and so on. I’m speculating now, but what we haven’t found is where they buried their own. Since we’re speculating, a chamber at the back of a cave could be quite suggestive – it’s total speculation, but you’re not going to bury people in your kitchen or in your living room.”
Efforts of excavations have been planned to explore more about the Neanderthal, but the researchers believe the new area could offer more clues about the existence, culture, and society of these coastal, Mediterranean Neanderthals.
Finlayson said that these caves had been providing us with plenty of truths about the behavior of these people, and, far from the old view of the brutish that these ancients were ape-like beings, he said that our team was realizing that in every respect they had been human, and capable of most of the things that modern humans had been unable to do adding that his team even knew that they had been interchanging genes.
For the professor, the search is about more than just finding skeletons. It is about finding out who the Neanderthals were, how they lived, how they died, and how they survived.
“I’m proud to say that I’ve done my test, and I’ve got two-point-something percent Neanderthal DNA in me,”
He added that they had never gone extinct because the modern man carried a little of them in his genes.
