Alex Menez - Almost Homo calpicus: an updated historiography of the Gibraltar Skull

Part of #NEANDERTHAL: The Conference which was organised by the Gibraltar National Museum from 13th to 15th September 2018 at the University of Gibraltar.

The Gibraltar Skull, also known as the Forbes’ Quarry skull or Gibraltar 1, is Gibraltar’s most celebrated fossil. It was presented to the Gibraltar Scientific Society (at the time known as the Museum Society) in 1848 by its twenty-three-year-old Secretary Lieutenant Edmund Réné Flint. Almost nothing is known about its discovery. This is in sharp contrast to the discovery of other Neanderthal finds such as the Engis, Neander Valley, and Le Moustier fossils.

The Gibraltar Skull was sent to England in 1864 where the anatomist and anthropologist George Busk declared that it “resembles, in all essential particulars . . . the far-famed Neanderthal skull; but in many respects, it is of infinitely higher value than that much-disputed relic”. And Charles Darwin, one of the first to see the skull after it arrived in England, described it as “wonderful”. How much do we know about the early history of the skull? The majority of accounts have the Gibraltar Scientific Society stashing the fossil in a drawer or on a shelf gathering dust for years, its true importance having been missed. If only, the accounts go, it had been sent to England earlier, we would today be discussing Gibraltar Man, and not Neanderthal Man. In my presentation I will show that this historiography is not quite correct.

© Gibraltar National Museum, 2018