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The history of Gibraltar portrays how The Rock gained an importance and a reputation far exceeding its size, influencing and shaping the people who came to reside here over the centuries.〔(Discover pocket guide to Gibraltar, 5th edition )〕 ==Prehistoric== Evidence of hominid inhabitation of the Rock dates back to the Neanderthals. A Neanderthal skull was discovered in Forbes' Quarry in 1848, prior to the "original" discovery in the Neander Valley. In 1926, the skull of a Neanderthal child was found in Devil's Tower. Mousterian deposits found at Gorham's Cave, which are associated with Neanderthals in Europe, have been dated to as recently as 28,000 to 24,000 BP,〔(Neanderthals at Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar )〕 leading to suggestions that Gibraltar was one of the last places of Neanderthal habitation. Modern humans apparently visited the Gibraltar area in prehistoric times after the Neanderthal occupancy.〔(National Geographic – Last of the Neanderthals )〕 While the rest of Europe was cooling, the area around Gibraltar back then resembled a European Serengeti. Leopards, hyenas, lynxes, wolves and bears lived among wild cattle, horses, deer, ibexes, oryxes and rhinos – all surrounded by olive trees and stone pines, with partridges and ducks overhead, tortoises in the underbrush and mussels, limpets and other shellfish in the waters. Clive Finlayson, evolutionary biologist at the Gibraltar Museum said "this natural richness of wildlife and plants in the nearby sandy plains, woodlands, shrublands, wetlands, cliffs and coastline probably helped the Neanderthals to persist." Evidence at the cave shows the Neanderthals of Gibraltar likely used it as a shelter "for 100,000 years." Cro-Magnon man took over Gibraltar around 24,000 BCE. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Timeline of the history of Gibraltar」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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