Gibraltar 1

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Neanderthal Skull Gibraltar 1
The skull of Gibraltar 1 before the limestone crusts were removed

Gibraltar 1 is the scientific name for a fossil skull that was discovered in a limestone quarry ( Forbes' Quarry ) in northern Gibraltar in 1848 . The find was first scientifically described by George Busk in July 1864. It was so similar to the eponymous fossil Neanderthal 1 discovered in 1856 near Düsseldorf that Busk ascribed the Gibraltar skull - as a second independent evidence - to the same species , Homo neanderthalensis .

Find history

The exact circumstances of the find and the horizon of the find were not documented in the middle of the 19th century. It is only certain that the skull was given to the Gibraltar Scientific Society by a member of the British armed forces, Lieutenant Edmund Henry Réné Flint . She documented the receipt of the find on March 3, 1848 and kept it as a curiosity in her scientific collection. In 1862 George Busk and Hugh Falconer visited the British overseas territory on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and were made aware of the skull. Falconer named the skull "Homo calpicus" in 1864 , derived from the Latin Mons Calpe , the Roman name for the Rock of Gibraltar . Busk, however, assigned it in 1864 to the species Homo neanderthalensis proposed by William King in a lecture to the Geological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the late summer of the previous year . Busk promptly arranged for the skull to be brought to London and presented to the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1868 . The fossil has been in their possession since then, but was loaned to the British Museum (Natural History) in 1955 and is now kept in the Natural History Museum in London.

In his first description of the find in July 1864 in The Reader , published in London , Busk mentions that the skull had been sent to England by his friend, Captain Brome, the director of the Gibraltar military prison. He certifies the find because of its appearance and the adhering minerals an "enormous age"; the skull resembles “in all essential details”, including the strength of the bones, “the well-known Neanderthal skull.” In some respects it is even infinitely more valuable (“of infinitely higher value”) than this because it has been preserved much more completely be as the fossil from Germany. At the same time, Busk emphasizes that the find from Gibraltar proves that the anatomical features of the eponymous fossil Neandertal 1 are not individual peculiarities, but that they were possibly characteristic of a race "that was widespread from the Rhine to the Pillars of Hercules ." he scoffs: "Whatever the banks of the Düssel [the location of the fossil Neanderthal 1 may have happened] even Professor Mayer is hardly suspect that a is rickety Kosak the campaign of 1814 had crept into the fragile columns of the rock of Gibraltar . ”In this ironic comment, Busk alluded to the fact that the German anatomist August Franz Josef Karl Mayer, who was“ a determined supporter of the Christian belief in creation in its traditional form ”, had attributed the fossil Neandertal 1 to a Russian Cossack who died around 1813 / 14 in the turmoil of the wars of liberation against Napoleon had died and in which the pronounced Practice eyeballs would have formed due to constant worry lines as a result of his rachitically deformed legs.

Since Busk had insufficient knowledge of the field of comparative human anatomy and was therefore dependent on the cooperation with Falconer, Busk stopped work on an exact description of the skull after Falconer's unexpected death in January 1865 and never took it up again. In addition, the recognition of the Neanderthals as the forerunners of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) remained controversial for decades, both of which led to the Gibraltar skull being forgotten again.

The Gibraltar find of 1848 was the second fossil of a Neanderthal man known to experts after the Engis 2 skull discovered in 1829 ; However, both were only recognized as Neanderthals after the scientific description of the fossil Neandertal 1 (1857) - Engis 2 not until 1936. Had the name Homo calpicus been proposed not until 1864 but a few months earlier, before August 1863, this would probably have been suggested - instead of Homo neanderthalensis and Neanderthals - in accordance with the international rules for the Zoological nomenclature of the still valid name of the fossil "Gibraltarians" since William King his name proposal Homo neanderthalenis first time during the 33rd meeting of the British Science Association presented which had taken place in Newcastle upon Tyne in August and September 1863 .

Dating

On the Smithsonian Institution's website , the Gibraltar 1 skull is said to be 70,000 to 45,000 years old. In 1997 he was first described as probably belonging to a Neanderthal woman for whom a body weight of 50 to 70 kg was calculated. In 2019, the diagnosis “female” was confirmed on the basis of DNA characteristics. At the same time, the preserved DNA fragments were interpreted to the effect that the Neanderthals are more closely related to two much older, around 120,000-year-old Neanderthal finds from Belgium and Germany than to an approximately the same old, around 49,000-year-old find from Spain.

Gibraltar 2

The child's skull Gibraltar 2

In 1926, fragments of a second skull and associated lower jaw were discovered (archive number: Gibraltar 2 ). In 1986 they were identified as the remains of a Neanderthal child who died at the age of three. This fossil is also known as "Devil's Tower Child", named after the place where it was found, the Abri Devil's Tower Mousterian rock shelter . He is believed to be 50,000 to 45,000 years old BP , and DNA analysis in 2019 showed the child was a boy.

literature

  • Geoffrey McKay Morant: Studies of Palaeolithic Man II: A biometric study of Neanderthaloid skulls and of their relationships to modern racial types. In: Annals of Eugenics. Vol. 2, No. 3-4, 1927, pp. 318-380
  • Alex Menez: Almost Homo calpicus. The Early History of the Gibraltar Skull. Gibraltar National Museum, 2018, ISBN 978-1-919655-12-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b George Busk: Pithecoid Priscan Man from Gibraltar. In: The Reader. A Review of Literature, Science, and Art. July 23, 1864 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ George Busk: Pithecoid Priscan Man from Gibraltar. In: The Reader of July 23, 1864 [German: monkey-like old man from Gibraltar ; derived from the Greek πίθηκος, ancient Gr. pronounced píthēkos ("monkey") and Latin priscus ("old")]
  3. ↑ Alex Menez: Custodian of the Gibraltar Skull: The History of the Gibraltar Scientific Society. In: Sciences History: Volume 37, No. 1, 2018, pp. 34-62, doi: 10.17704 / 1944-6178-37.1.34
  4. ^ Bernard Wood : Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p. 281, ISBN 978-1-4051-5510-6 .
  5. ↑ Martin Kuckenberg: Was Eden in the Neandertal? In search of early man. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-430-15773-0 , p. 51.
  6. ↑ Paige Madison: The Forgotten Fossil: The Wild Homo calpicus of Gibraltar. In: Endeavor. Volume 40, No. 4, 2016, pp. 268–270, doi: 10.1016 / j.endeavor.2016.09.005
  7. ^ William King : On the Neanderthal Skull, or Reasons for believing it to belong to the Clydian Period and to a species different from that represented by Man. In: British Association for the Advancement of Science, Notices and Abstracts for 1863, Part II , London, 1864, p. 81 f., Digitized
  8. ↑ Gibraltar 1 on humanorigins.si.edu , last accessed on January 9, 2019
  9. ^ Edward PF Rose and Christopher B. Stringer : Gibraltar woman and Neanderthal Man. In: Geology Today. Volume 13, No. 5, 1997, pp. 179-184, doi: 10.1046 / j.1365-2451.1997.00010.x
  10. ↑ Thorolf Hardt et al .: Safari to the primitive man. Discover, explore, experience the history of mankind. E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Stuttgart 2009, p. 133 u. 135 (= Kleine Senckenberg series, volume 31), ISBN 978-3-510-61395-3 .
  11. ↑ a b c Lukas Bokelmann, Mateja Hajdinjak, Stéphane Peyrégne et al .: A genetic analysis of the Gibraltar Neanderthals. In: PNAS . Online pre-publication of July 15, 2019, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1903984116
  12. ↑ M. Christopher Dean, Christopher B. Stringer and Timothy G. Bromage : Age at death of the Neanderthal child from Devil's Tower, Gibraltar and the implications for studies of general growth and development in Neanderthals. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 70, No. 3, 1986, pp. 301-309, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330700305
  13. ↑ Frank Spencer (Ed.): History of Physical Anthropology. Garland, New York and London 1997, p. 437, ISBN 0-8153-0490-0