Devil's Tower | |
---|---|
Torre del Diablo | |
Part of Fortifications of Gibraltar | |
Devil's Tower Road, Gibraltar | |
Coordinates | 36°08′46″N5°20′30″W / 36.146143°N 5.341701°W |
Type | Watchtower |
Site information | |
Condition | Demolished |
Site history | |
Demolished | 1940 |
The Devil's Tower was an ancient watchtower in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar close to a rock shelter where fossil remains of a Neanderthal child were discovered, together with palaeolithic tools. The Tower and remains, however, were unrelated.
The tower was constructed in limestone. It was demolished in 1940 during World War II [1] on the orders of Governor General Sir Noel Mason-Macfarlane on the grounds that it was in the line of fire of one of Gibraltar's many guns. [2]
The Devil's Tower skull was that of a Neanderthal child. The remains were excavated by Dorothy Garrod in a Mousterian shelter on the site in 1926. [3] There is evidence of an injury to the mouth, and the teeth show developmental disorders consistent with seasonal starvation. The classic Neanderthal large brain case is evident and the brow ridges have started to develop. The skull substantially reinforced the evidence of the Neanderthals of Gibraltar.
Most of the lower jaw has survived, along with the frontal bone, most of the right side of the face and the left parietal bone.
The tower gave its name to the Devil's Tower Camp, the Devils Tower Emplacement, Devil's Tower Road and other nearby places.
Cro-Magnon is an Aurignacian site, located in a rock shelter at Les Eyzies, a hamlet in the commune of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, Dordogne, southwestern France.
Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1926.
Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod, CBE, FBA was an English archaeologist who specialised in the Palaeolithic period. She held the position of Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 1939 to 1952, and was the first woman to hold a chair at either Oxford or Cambridge.
La Ferrassie 1 (LF1) is a male Neanderthal skeleton estimated to be 58–50,000 years old. It was discovered at the La Ferrassie site in France by Louis Capitan and Denis Peyrony in 1909. The skull is the most complete Neanderthal skull ever found. With a cranial capacity of 1641 cm3, it is the second largest hominid skull ever discovered, after Amud 1.
Gorham's Cave is a sea-level cave in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Though not a sea cave, it is often mistaken for one. Considered to be one of the last known habitations of the Neanderthals in Europe, the cave gives its name to the Gorham's Cave complex, which is a combination of four distinct caves of such importance that they are combined into a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the only one in Gibraltar. The three other caves are Vanguard Cave, Hyaena Cave, and Bennett's Cave.
Feldhofer 1 or Neanderthal 1 is the scientific name of the 40,000-year-old type specimen fossil of the species Homo neanderthalensis, discovered in August 1856 in a German cave, the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte, in the Neandertal valley, 13 km (8.1 mi) east of Düsseldorf. In 1864, the fossil's description was first published in a scientific magazine and officially named. Neanderthal was not the first Neanderthal fossil discovery. Other Neanderthal fossils had been discovered earlier, but their true nature and significance had not been recognized, and, therefore, no separate species name was assigned.
Teshik-Tash 1 is a Neanderthal skeleton discovered in 1938 in Teshik-Tash Cave, in the Bajsuntau mountain range, Uzbek SSR (Uzbekistan), Central Asia.
Dorothea Minola Alice Bate, also known as Dorothy Bate, was a Welsh palaeontologist and pioneer of archaeozoology. Her life's work was to find fossils of recently extinct mammals with a view to understanding how and why giant and dwarf forms evolved.
Grimaldi man is the name formerly given to two human skeletons of the Upper Paleolithic discovered in Italy in 1901. The remains are now recognized as representing two individuals, and are dated to possibly being of the same age as the five Cro-Magnon skeletons discovered by French palaeontologist Louis Lartet in 1868, and classified as part of the wider Early European modern humans population.
Neanderthal anatomy differed from modern humans in that they had a more robust build and distinctive morphological features, especially on the cranium, which gradually accumulated more derived aspects, particularly in certain isolated geographic regions. This robust build was an effective adaptation for Neanderthals, as they lived in the cold environments of Europe. In which they also had to operate in Europe's dense forest landscape that was extremely different from the environments of the African grassland plains that Homo sapiens adapted to with a different anatomical build.
Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh is a prehistoric archaeological site in Upper Galilee, Israel. It is situated 800 m (2,600 ft) from the Nahal Amud outlet, approximately 30 m (98 ft) above the wadi bed. It was found to house a fossil today known as the "Galilee skull" or "The Yabrudian Man".
Gibraltar 1 is the name given to a Neanderthal skull, also known as the Gibraltar Skull, which was discovered at Forbes' Quarry in Gibraltar. The skull was presented to the Gibraltar Scientific Society by its secretary, Lieutenant Edmund Henry Réné Flint, on 3 March 1848. This discovery predates the finding of the Neanderthal type specimen.
Forbes' Quarry is located on the northern face of the Rock of Gibraltar within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The area was quarried during the 19th century to supply stone for reinforcing the fortress' military installations. In the course of the quarrying, a limestone cave was found. The second ever Neanderthal discovery was made within this cave when Cpt. Edmund Flint found the skull of an adult female Neanderthal in 1848.
Gibraltar 2, also known as Devil's Tower Child, represented five skull fragments of a male Neanderthal child discovered in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The discovery of the fossils at the Devil's Tower Mousterian rock shelter was made by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in 1926. It represented the second excavation of a Neanderthal skull in Gibraltar, after Gibraltar 1, the second Neanderthal skull ever found. In the early twenty-first century, Gibraltar 2 underwent reconstruction.
Cueva de la Pileta is a cave in the province of Málaga, Spain, that was discovered in 1905 and contains cave paintings.
Devil's Tower Cave is a cave in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Archaeologist Dorothy Garrod found a Neanderthal skull in the cave which, together with other evidence found in this cave, shows it was used as a rock shelter by the Neanderthals of Gibraltar.
Colonel William Willoughby Cole Verner was a British soldier, writer, ornithologist, and inventor of a type of compass. He was briefly a Professor of Topography at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is remembered for bringing Cueva de la Pileta, a cave filled with prehistoric paintings, to international attention.
The Neanderthals in Gibraltar were among the first to be discovered by modern scientists and have been among the most well studied of their species according to a number of extinction studies which emphasize regional differences, usually claiming the Iberian Peninsula partially acted as a “refuge” for the shrinking Neanderthal populations and the Gibraltar population of Neanderthals as having been one of many dwindling populations of archaic human populations, existing just until around 42,000 years ago. Many other Neanderthal populations went extinct around the same time.
Krapina Neanderthal site, also known as Hušnjakovo Hill is a Paleolithic archaeological site located near Krapina, Croatia.
The Paleolithic in the Iberian peninsula is the longest period of Iberian prehistory, spanning from c. 1.3 million years ago (Ma) to c. 11,500 years ago, ending at roughly the same time as the Pleistocene epoch. The Paleolithic was characterized by climate oscillations between ice ages and small interglacials, producing heavy changes in Iberia's orography. Cultural change within the period is usually described in terms of lithic industry evolution.