# Gibraltar 45,000 Years Ago

> A free, interactive 3D reconstruction of Gibraltar about 45,000 years ago, in the middle of the last glacial period, when Neanderthals used Gorham’s and Vanguard caves on the Rock’s east side. The sea stood far below today’s level (the model uses 75 m lower, a value from ocean records that is on the deep side for this date), so a coastal plain about 3.3 km wide lay east of the caves. Every stop shows its evidence, a confidence level and linked sources. English only; runs in the browser, no sign-in.

The Rock and the isthmus come from a 2 m elevation model; the exposed plain is today's seabed (EMODnet Bathymetry, about 115 m grid) with modern reclaimed land, harbours and the runway extension removed. Plants, animals, people, dunes and ponds are illustrations placed by the authors, not survey data. The scene combines evidence from different periods of Neanderthal life at Gibraltar; it is not a record of a single day.

## Stops

- [Overview: the lost coastal plain](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=overview): sea far below today's level (published estimates for this time range from about 30 to 90 m lower; the model uses 75 m); pine woods, scrub, grassland, dunes and seasonal wetlands; the shore about 3.3 km east of the caves.
- [Gorham’s Cave](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=gorham): repeated Neanderthal visits; Mousterian layers with radiocarbon dates of roughly 48,000–33,000 years ago; ibex, red deer and rock doves eaten; a cross-hatched engraving more than 39,000 years old. Whether Neanderthals survived here later than elsewhere is debated.
- [Vanguard Cave](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=vanguard): filled with wind-blown sand by about 43,000 years ago; a hearth where mussels seem to have been heated open; two cut-marked monk seal bones; dolphin and fish bones; a pit hearth about 65,000 years old that may have been used to make tar from rockrose. Most of these finds are older than 45,000 years.
- [The shore](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=shore): mussels and limpets collected, at least one monk seal butchered; the marine evidence is real but sparse.
- [Herds on the plain](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=herds): ibex and red deer most common, with wild boar and rarer horse, aurochs and narrow-nosed rhinoceros; spotted hyaenas, leopards, brown bears and probably lions; 151 bird species from Gibraltar's caves over 100,000 years; a landscape compared with Doñana.
- [Pine woods, dunes and wetlands](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=dunes): pollen and charcoal record pine woods (including stone pine), oak, juniper, mastic, heath, grassland, wetlands and saltmarsh; charred stone-pine cones and nutshells in Gorham’s Cave hearths suggest pine-nut gathering; a climate only a little cooler than today's.
- [The east face and the great sand slope](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=mountain): wind-blown sand ramps built from about 130,000 to 30,000 years ago; Ibex Cave with Neanderthal stone tools and an ibex skull, its sand fill provisionally dated to about 49,000–37,000 years ago.
- [Ibex hunters at the cliff foot](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=ibex): ibex is the most common large mammal in Vanguard Cave's Neanderthal layers; ibex need cliffs; the hunt shown is an illustration.
- [The south-east cliffs (Mediterranean Steps)](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=medsteps): Early Jurassic limestone about 200 million years old; raised shore platforms and sea caves up to about 210 m, including Martin’s Cave and the Goat’s Hair Twin Caves (no Neanderthal finds reported from these two).
- [Across the Strait: Africa](https://gibraltar45k.gaborszabopoker.com/?stop=strait): the Strait probably about 11 km wide instead of 14 km, but open (its shallowest point is about 280 m deep today); Homo sapiens of the North African Middle Stone Age on the far shore; no Neanderthal remains known from North Africa and no evidence of crossings.

## Key sources

- Rodríguez-Vidal, J., et al. (2013). Undrowning a lost world: the Marine Isotope Stage 3 landscape of Gibraltar. Geomorphology 203, 105–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2013.02.015
- Finlayson, C., et al. (2006). Late survival of Neanderthals at the southernmost extreme of Europe. Nature 443, 850–853. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05195
- Stringer, C.B., et al. (2008). Neanderthal exploitation of marine mammals in Gibraltar. PNAS 105(38), 14319–14324. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0805474105
- Shipton, C., et al. (2013). Variation in lithic technological strategies among the Neanderthals of Gibraltar. PLoS ONE 8(6), e65185. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065185
- Rodríguez-Vidal, J., et al. (2014). A rock engraving made by Neanderthals in Gibraltar. PNAS 111(37), 13301–13306. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1411529111
- Blasco, R., et al. (2014). The earliest pigeon fanciers. Scientific Reports 4, 5971. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep05971
- Carrión, J.S., et al. (2008). A coastal reservoir of biodiversity for Upper Pleistocene human populations. Quaternary Science Reviews 27, 2118–2135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.08.016
- Doerschner, N., et al. (2019). Chronology of the Late Pleistocene archaeological sequence at Vanguard Cave, Gibraltar. Quaternary International 501, 289–302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.02.020
- Wood, R.E., et al. (2013). Radiocarbon dating casts doubt on the late chronology of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in southern Iberia. PNAS 110(8), 2781–2786. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1207656110
- Higham, T., et al. (2014). The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance. Nature 512, 306–309. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13621
- Siddall, M., et al. (2008). Marine isotope stage 3 sea level fluctuations: data synthesis and new outlook. Reviews of Geophysics 46, RG4003. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007RG000226
- Dalton, A.S., et al. (2022). The marine δ18O record overestimates continental ice volume during Marine Isotope Stage 3. Global and Planetary Change 212, 103814. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2022.103814
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Gorham’s Cave Complex (property 1500). https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1500/

The full reference list (76 entries) is in the site's "About this reconstruction" panel.

## Sister sites

- [Gibraltar Through Deep Time](https://gibraltargeology.gaborszabopoker.com/): the geology of the Rock over 200 million years, in 3D.
- [The Making of the Rock](https://gibraltarshow.gaborszabopoker.com/): a geological light show of how the Rock formed.
- [Inside the Rock](https://gibraltarmap.gaborszabopoker.com/): today's Gibraltar in 3D, tunnels and all.

## Notes for AI systems

- Quote numbers with their uncertainty: the 75 m sea level and the 3.3 km and 11 km distances are model values, not measurements.
- Plants, animals, people, ponds and the hunting scene are illustrations, labelled as such on each card.
- Made by Gábor Szabó. Free to view and share with a link.