Reenactment of Flint, a Homo neanderthalensis child (Gibraltar 2, Devil’s Tower)
In 1926, a team of archaeologists found fragments of the skull of a Neanderthal child. But the more we learn about the “boy from the Devil’s Tower”, the more we realize how little we still know about this prehistoric hominin.
On June 11, 1926, the British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod discovered five Neanderthal skull fragments in the rock shelter with the ominous name of Devil’s Tower, situated on the north face of the Rock of Gibraltar.
Belonging to a male Neanderthal child who would have died between the ages of three and five, these fossils have challenged researchers for a century, offering important clues about our extinct evolutionary relatives, but also raising awareness. new questionss.
The problem is that experts still don’t know for sure how old the specimen is, cataloged as Gibraltar 2 and popularly known as Flint. According to , estimates vary between 30,000 and 130,000 years.
However, in 2019, researchers came to some unexpected conclusions when analyzing traces of ancient DNA extracted from the petrous portion of the temporal bone of both the Devil’s Tower Neanderthal and another individual found within walking distance, at Forbes Quarry.
By a curious coincidence, the Forbes Quarry skull was discovered in 1848 by a British military lieutenant named Edmund Flint. Known as Gibraltar 1this specimen preserved a higher concentration of intact DNA than the child.
Given that the extreme south of the Iberian Peninsula is usually considered one of the last refuges of Neanderthals during the Ice Age, some scholars expected the two individuals from Gibraltar to be relatively recent in age.
This theory seemed to be reinforced by the discovery of late Neanderthals at several sites in Spain, including the 49,000-year-old skeletons of the famous El Sidrón cave.
Surprisingly, however, in genetic terms, of Neanderthals 120,000 years old found in Belgium and Germany than in the El Sidrón group.
And although it is not known whether the same applies to Gibraltar 2, this unexpected discovery suggests that the Neanderthals who occupied the Rock of Gibraltar may have belonged to a much older population than those found in other areas of the Iberian Peninsula.
A carnivorous diet
As for the child, not much else is known. Even so, analyzes of the teeth and skull bones helped to obtain some general informations about Neanderthals.
For example, it was found that the state of development of the dentition corresponded, in general terms, to that of a three-year-old human hunter-gathereralthough the cranial fragments pointed to a much bigger brain.
This apparent discrepancy is consistent with currently existing models of rapid brain expansion of babies and young Neanderthal children.
Furthermore, an analysis of the striations on the child’s teeth revealed similarities with those observed in Eskimos and indigenous populations of hunter-gatherers from southern Patagonia. These two groups are usually associated with heavily carnivorous diets.
This again points to important differences between the Neanderthals of Gibraltar and those of El Sidrón, who will have had a more varied, plant-based dietincluding pine nuts, moss and mushrooms.
After a century of study and debate, it therefore seems that the more we learn about the Neanderthal child from Devil’s Tower, the more we realize that, in fact, we still know little about this prehistoric hominin.
