It was at Gibraltar 28,000 years ago, some 2,000 years more recently than previously thought.More info at NY Times.
The archaeologists and paleontologists reported yesterday finding several hundred stone tools in Gorham’s Cave, on the rugged Mediterranean coast near the Rock of Gibraltar. They are artifacts of the Mousterian technology, usually associated with Neanderthals. So far, no fossil bones of the cave occupants have been uncovered.
The researchers said, however, that the tools established the survival of a population of Neanderthals, a people closely related to human ancestors, in the southernmost point of Western Europe long after they disappeared elsewhere.
These were, they concluded, the last Neanderthals “currently recorded anywhere.”
Neanderthals lived longer than previously thought
Posted on Sunday, September 17 2006 @ 5:20 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
A team of international scientists claims they have found where and when the Neanderthals made their last stand before extinction.