Neanderthal Man lived in the Nerja Caves

View of the inside of the Nerja Cave

Three tools dating from 40,000 years ago have been found in the caves

The confirmation that three flint tools date from 40,000 years ago confirms the fact that the Nerja Cave (Málaga province) was inhabited by Neanderthal man.

A group of scientists have been looking at items removed from the famous grotto some 20 years ago and say that there is no doubt about the evidence.

The tools date from the middle Palaeolithic period and are part of 151,588 items which have been newly classified in an operation led by Antonio Garrido.

The news was released to the press yesterday by the Nerja Cave Foundation. Director, Ángel Ramírez, said that the news marks a key day in the history of the cave, and that it was exciting to know that that the municipality was witness to one of the most relevant prehistoric times.

Nerja Cave Website - www.cuevadenerja.es

Source: Typically Spanish

Cave Records Provide Clues To Climate Change

A close up of one of the stalagmites analyzed in the study.
Credit: Jud Partin

When Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Kim Cobb and graduate student Jud Partin wanted to understand the mechanisms that drove the abrupt climate change events that occurred thousands of years ago, they didn't drill for ice cores from the glaciers of Greenland or the icy plains of Antarctica, as is customary for paleoclimatolgists. Instead, they went underground.

Growing inside the caves of the tropical Pacific island of Borneo are some of the keys to understanding how the Earth's climate suddenly changed - several times - over the last 25,000 years. By analyzing stalagmites, the pilar-like rock formations that stem from the ground in caves, they were able to produce a high-resolution and continuous record of the climate over this equatorial rainforest.

"These stalagmites are, in essence, tropical ice cores forming over thousands of years," said Partin. "Each layer of the rock contains important chemical traces that help us determine what was going on in the climate thousands of years ago, much like the ice cores drilled from Greenland or Antarctica."

Ice Age Northern Europeans could have reached the Costa del Sol earlier than previously thought

Experts have been studying thousands of remains uncovered in excavations in the Caves of Nerja

The Nerja Cave Foundation released details on Wednesday of more 150,000 archaeological remains unearthed in excavations which took place in the caverns moiré than 20 years ago, and which were studied and classified last month.

The team of experts examined close to one and a half tons of material extracted from the caves two decades ago, and amongst their discoveries, according to a report in Diario Sur, were a number of tools from the Solutrean culture, characteristic of a period previously unknown in the Nerja Caves. They may date back as long ago as 22,000 B.C.

It could mean that prehistoric man escaped Ice Age northern Europe to the Costa del Sol much earlier than was previously thought.

More definitive results are expected when the cataloguing process has concluded.

Source: Typically Spanish