Gorham's Cave

Gorham's Cave
256px View of the Alboran Sea from inside Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar
Map showing location of Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar
Location	Southeast face of the Rock of Gibraltar, Gibraltar
Coordinates
Depth	18 metres (59 ft)
Discovery	1907
Geology	Limestone

Gorham's Cave is a natural sea cave in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, considered to be one of the last known habitations of the Neanderthals in Europe.

It is located on the southeastern face of the Rock of Gibraltar. When first inhabited some 55 thousand years ago, it would have been approximately 5 kilometres from the shore, but, due to changes in sea level, it is now only a few metres from the Mediterranean Sea.

Gorham's Cave gives its name to the Gorham's Cave complex, which is a combination of four distinct caves of such importance that they have been proposed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The three other caves are Vanguard Cave, Hyaena Cave, and Bennett's Cave.

Discovery

View of Gorham's Cave on the east face of the Rock of Gibraltar

The cave is named after Captain A. Gorham of the 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers who discovered it in 1907, when opening a fissure at the rear of a sea cavern. Gorham inscribed his name and the date of his discovery in lamp-black on the wall of the cave, which has borne his name ever since. After this initial discovery, it seems the cave was forgotten—at least at an official level—as Gibraltarian historian and potholer George Palao recalls an inscription on the cave wall that read J. J. Davies 1943.

Description

Gorham's Cave is sea cave which has formed in Jurassic limestone. Total length of this cave is approximately 100 m and at the entrance it is approximately 35 m high. Further inside the cave becomes narrower and turns per approximately 90 degrees. From the entrance of cave opens a view on Alboran Sea. It is possible that during further research the cave will become longer.

Archaeology

Gorham's Cave has been a site of archaeological interest since its importance was first recognised. The beach below the cave (Governor's Beach) had been inaccessible from the cliffs above; however, after one episode of a tunnelling project in the rock, the beach and cave became accessible due to the pile of spoil that was created.

Royal Engineers Keighley and Ward were the first to report artefacts of archaeological interest in the cave via the Gibraltar newspapers. They had found pottery and stone tools. Moreover, they reported that human and animal remains had been discovered in Gorham's cave. Rev. F. E. Brown of the Gibraltar Society reported these findings to the governor of Gibraltar who requested further investigations after a site visit. These investigations were reported to the British Museum for their deliberation.

Lieutenant George Baker Alexander, Royal Engineer and a graduate geologist from the University of Cambridge, arrived in Gibraltar in 1945. He decided to make a geological survey of Gibraltar that resulted in a detailed geological map. Alexander was the first to excavate Gorham’s Cave, before his departure from Gibraltar in 1948 after the Gibraltar Museum challenged his methods. There are no preserved materials about these excavations.

In 1945, the governor wrote to the British Museum requesting that they continue further explorations of the cave. The museum had no resources, however, so they forwarded his enquiry to Professor Dorothy Garrod at Cambridge, who had found a Neanderthal skull at Devil's Tower Cave during her earlier work in Gibraltar in the 1920s. Garrod sought the assistance of Dr. John d'Arcy Waechter, a fellow of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. Waechter arrived in September 1948 and spent two months digging test pits to see if further excavation would be justified. Waechter's success resulted in his return in June 1950. He went back to England in 1951, without concluding the work and returned from February to July 1952. During a final visit in 1954 he successfully requested financial assistance from the local government to complete his work.

Continuing excavation

Excavation of this site has resulted in the discovery of four layers of stratigraphy. Level I has produced evidence for eighth to third centuries BC use by Phoenicians. Below that, level II produced evidence for brief Neolithic use. Level III has yielded at least 240 Upper Paleolithic artefacts of Magdalenian and Solutrean origin. Level IV has produced 103 items, including spear-points, knives, and scraping devices that are identified as Mousterian, and shows repeated use over thousands of years.

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating gives dates for level IV of between 33 and 23 thousand years before the present (kyr BP)—the researchers felt that the uncertainties at this time depth made calibration impractical. They suggest occupation until at least 28 kyr BP and possibly 24 kyr BP. No fossil remains have been found that would allow identification pointing to either Neanderthal or anatomically modern human inhabitants, nor associated with findings of a modern human in a site at nearby Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Portugal of 24,500 years ago who may have featured Neanderthal genetic admixtures, although Mousterian culture normally is identified with Neanderthals in Europe.

Symbolic rock engraving

The prehistoric engraving found in Gorham's Cave

A symbolic rock engraving was found in the cave during July 2012. An international team of researchers carrying out excavations in the cave uncovered a series of criss-crossing lines covering approximately a one-square-metre area, cut into the surface of a ledge about 100 metres (330 ft) from its entrance. The engraving consists of eight lines arranged in two groups of three long lines and intersected by two shorter ones, suggesting that it is a symbol. The engravings are thought to be at least 39,000 years old, because they were found below a layer of undisturbed sediment of that age in which 294 Neanderthal stone tools were discovered.

It has been described as "abstract art" by Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal of the University of Huelva, it is "the first directly demonstrable example of an abstract work, carried out consistently and with care and requiring prolonged and concentrated work, that has been produced in a cave." Advancing that interpretation, Rodríguez-Vidal notes that the discovery is highly significant in evaluating the intellectual development of the Neanderthals, who had not previously been thought capable of producing complex symbols or abstract art. He notes that "creating paintings or carvings in caves is seen as a cognitive step in human development. This behaviour was considered exclusive to modern humans and has been used as an argument to distinguish our direct ancestors from ancient man, including Neanderthals." William Rendu of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) called the discovery "a major contribution to the redefinition of our perception of Neanderthal culture. It is new and even stronger evidence of the Neanderthal capacity for developing complex symbolic thought." Paul Tacon of Griffith University in Australia said that it was "the last nail in the coffin for the hypothesis that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to modern humans."

The issue of the artistic abilities of Neanderthals has been a long-running topic of controversy. Other possible examples of Neanderthal art have been found in other caves in Europe, including motifs in Spain, possible jewellery in France, and a bone "flute" discovered in Slovenia.

The team researching the Gorham's Cave engraving sought to determine whether it might have been produced accidentally, for example as a by-product of using the rock as a surface for cutting meat or fur. They carried out experiments with tools similar to those that would have been available at the time to carve grooves into blocks of similar dolomite rock, to identify how the engravings might have been made. They decided that the lines were most likely created by using a pointed tool or cutting edge to scrape repeatedly along, and deepen, an existing groove, taking as many as 300 strokes and requiring at least an hour's work. In addition, the engraving is in what would have been a very visible location and would have been immediately noticeable to anyone entering the cave.

It is not known what the meaning of the engraving might have been, nor indeed, whether it had a meaning at all. Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum notes that "the engraving is at the point in the cave where the cave's orientation changes by 90 degrees" and speculates whether the engraving was related to the location: "It's almost like Clapham Junction, like it's showing an intersection. I'm speculating, but it does make you wonder whether it has something to do with mapping, or saying: 'This is where you are'." Francesco d'Errico, the director of research at CRNS, comments: "It's in a fixed location so, for example, it could be something to indicate to other Neanderthals visiting the cave that somebody was already using it, or that there was a group that owned that cave." Tacon notes that whatever the meaning, "the fact that they were marking their territory in this way before modern humans arrived in the region has huge implications for debates about what it is to be human and the origin of art." The ledge where the engraving was found may have been used by the Neanderthals as a place where they could rest at night, safe from predators; Finlayson comments that it was "a perfect place to rest and carve something."

The attribution of the engraving to the Neanderthals has been questioned in some quarters. Matt Pope of University College London cautions that "linking them directly to Neanderthal populations, or proving Neanderthals made them without any contact with modern humans is harder. The dates presented here are indirect, referring to material from within sediments covering the engravings and not the marks themselves. Given the dates also span a period when we know modern humans have reached Europe, a period where we have unresolved 'transitional' archaeological evidence difficult to attribute to either population, I'd be cautious in accepting Neanderthal authorship."

Harold Dibble of the University of Pennsylvania also has questioned the accuracy of the dating. He suggests that the engraving could have been made by modern humans and subsequently been covered by older sediments shifting within the cave. He comments, "It takes more than a few scratches—deliberate or not—to identify symbolic behaviour on the part of Neanderthals."

UNESCO World Heritage Site nomination

Gorham's cave gives its name to the Gorham's Cave complex, which is a grouping of four distinct caves of such importance that they are combined into a proposed UNESCO heritage site. The three other caves are the nearby Vanguard Cave, the Hyaena Cave, and Bennett's Cave.

In November 2010, the Gorham's Cave complex was put forward to compete for a nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Professor Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, was responsible for co-ordinating the efforts to obtain this nomination. The first step was a proposal to the United Kingdom cultural authorities to get Gorham's Cave complex added to the UK's World Heritage Tentative List. Such a list is revised every ten years, and the process for a new list was ongoing at the date of the submission.

The ownership of land associated with Gorham's Cave was passed from the UK Ministry of Defence to the government of Gibraltar in 2011. The agreement swapped this MOD land and more than 300 MOD houses with the government of Gibraltar, who in exchange agreed to build 90 new houses on remaining MOD land.

In May 2012 Gorham's Cave complex was on the short list of two sites, along with the Forth Rail Bridge, that was forwarded for submission to UNESCO.

External links

• Alfano S Did Neanderthals Last Longer? CBS News, 13 Sep 2006
• Rock art found in Gorham's Cave. (Spanish)
• History of Gorham's Cave from Gibraltar Museum website
• Current information on Gorham's Cave from the Gibraltar Museum website.