Morocco and Eastern Atlantis

The First Europeans

Two sites in Spain yield traces of the first men in Europe.

On March 3 1848 the skull of woman was discovered in a quarry in Gibraltar. It was known to be very old and it was shaped somewhat differently from a "normal" skull, but not much attention was paid to it at the time.

Then, eight years later, a team of quarry workers in the Neander Valley of Germany unearthed a similar skull. This time, experts began to suspect that it could have belonged to a hitherto unknown race of humans, or perhaps even be the "missing link" between apes and modern man. In any case, the Neander find got all the credit, for the race was to be known henceforth as Neanderthal Man.

Excavations during the intervening century-and-a-half have taught us more about this race of prehistoric humans which roamed Europe between 250,000 and 30,000 BC, when they mysteriously vanished, probably crowded out by our own ancestors. Gibraltar and southern Iberia were their final refuge. Today, paleontologists are delving into two of their last dwelling places, the caves of Zafarraya in Málaga and Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar (named after one Captain Gorham, who discovered the site in 1907), to find out more about the twilight years of the Neanderthals and perhaps explain the mystery of their disappearance.

These early humans had short limbs and thick bodies adapted to a colder climate, but they were by no means grunting brutes. The Neanderthals, whose brains were larger than ours, moved in groups of up to thirty individuals. They were hunters, which implies team work, which in turn implies some form of communication. They used fire for heat, they made crafted tools, they looked after the sick or weak members of the clan, and they observed ceremonies for their dead. On the other hand, on occasion they practiced cannibalism.

But they were to prove no match for the predecessors of modern man (sometimes called Cromagnons), who made their appearance in Europe around 40,000 years ago. These upstarts were more efficient at organizing hunts, communicating, seeking shelter, they were better craftsman and they wore textile clothes in addition to animal skins.

http://www.spainview.com/prehist.html