404 



NATURE 



[July 25, 1918 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 [The Editor does not hold himself responsible for 

 opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 

 can he undertake to return, or to .correspond with 

 the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 

 this or any other part of Nature. No notice is 

 taken of anonymous communications .'I 



Discovery of Neanderthal Man in Malta. 



Of the various problems relating to extinct forms 

 of man, nunc is of greater interest than that which 

 concerns }Jo)}to ne under thalensis. This peculiar and 

 extinct species of man appeared in Europe about the 

 commencement of the Mousterian cultural period, and 

 all traces of him vanish towards the close of that 

 period. Where he came from and where he finally 

 disappeared we do not know, hence every additional 

 fact we can collect about him is of value. So far his 

 remains have been found at Gibraltar (1848), the 

 Rhine valley {1857), Belgium, the Dordogne, and 

 Croatia. The peculiar teeth of this race were 

 reported from the Mousterian strata of a cave in 

 Jersev bv Dr. R. R. Marett in 191 1. Excavations in 

 the cave of Ghar Dalam, in the south-eastern corner 

 of Malta, carried out by Dr. Giuseppe Despott, 

 curator of the Natural History Museum of the Uni- 

 versity of Malta, working for a research committee 

 of the British Association, has brought to light the 

 remains of Neanderthal man in that island, thus 

 extending the distribution of this species to another 

 continent; for, in a zoological sense, Malta is African 

 rather than European. It is. true that so far only 

 two teeth have been found — a first upper molar and 

 a milk molar — but those who are familiar with the 

 characteristic form of the molar teeth of Neanderthal 

 man will have no hesitation in assenting to the truth 

 of Dr. Despott's discovery. I append Dr. Despott's 

 photograph of the two Neanderthal teeth, giving for 

 comparison photographs of the teeth of a modern type 

 of man found in the Neolithic strata of Ghar Dalam, 

 overlying the strata from which the Neanderthal teeth 

 were derived (Fig. i). 



Ilfti 



Fig. t.— Teeth from Ghar Dalam. (r) Upper Neanderthal molar; (2) upper 

 Neanderthal milk molar ; (3) milk molar from Neolithic strata ; (4, 5, 6, 

 7, S) other teeth from Neolithic strata. 



A brief history of the discovery is as follows : — In 

 19 14 Section H (Anthropology) of the British Associa- 

 tion appointed a research committee to carry out 

 archaeological investigations in Malta, Prof. J. L. 

 Myres being chairman, and Dr. T. Ashby, of the 

 British School of Rome, secretary. Dr. Ashby, in 

 NO. 2543, VOL. lOl] 



partnership with Dr. Zammit and Dr. Despott, com- 

 menced to investigate Ghar Dalam, a cave more than 

 700 ft. in length, with a width of 26 ft. to 60 ft., and 

 strata in its f^oor running down to a depth of 12 ft. or 

 more. In 1917 Dr. Despott, with the aid of a further 

 sum of loL granted by the British Association, con- 

 tinued the investigations for the committee in July 

 and August, 1917. Two trenches were dug across the 

 floor of the cave— one 50 ft. from the mouth, the 

 other 60 ft. further along. The strata encountered 

 will be seen from ja drawing given by Dr. Despott in 

 his report for 19 16. The upper two layers indicated 



Vn;. 2. — Section of the strata of the floor of Ghar Dalam. 



in the plan yielded remains of animals and pottery of 

 the Neolithic period. The third layer yielded remains 

 of the stag, a vole, a variety of snail (Helix vermi- 

 culata, var. despottii), and human remains — the first 

 upper molar of Homo neanderthalensis ; the other 

 human bones have not yet been studied. In the same 

 stratum and at the same level as the human remains 

 were found a flint scraper, three obsidian scrapers, a 

 chert knife, and a piece of apparently worked chert. 

 At another site in the same stratum was found part 

 of a fine flint knife, which Sir Hercules Read regards 

 as of late Cave period in workmanship. 



The milk molar of Neanderthal man came from the 

 next layer — the fourth in the appended section (Fig. 2). 

 In this stratum were found the remains of stag (ap- 

 parently two species), plentiful remains of the extinct 

 elephant (Elephas mnaidrensis), the fossil tooth of a 

 shark, worn and chipped at the point by being used as 

 a tool, and mollusc shells which had apparently been 

 opened and their contents extracted by ancient man. 

 .Still deeper strata yielded numerous remains of three 

 extinct elephants (E. mnaidrensis, E. melitensis, and 

 E. falconeri), two species of hippopotamus and of the 

 stag. So far traces of man have not been observed 

 in these deeper and older strata. 



When the committee of Section H . came to con- 

 sider the report transmitted to it by Dr. Ashby from 

 Malta, it at once recognised the value of Dr. Despott's 

 discovery and the importance of Ghar Dalam as a 

 repository of Pleistocene history. When one con- 

 siders the extent of the cave, the thickness of its 

 floor, and the fact that every trench so far made has 

 yielded traces of man, it is not too much to hope that 

 we have here a Pleistocene palace of Knossos — a site 

 which is likely to throw the same light on early man 

 in the Mediterranean as was thrown on the Bronze 

 period of that area by the discoveries made by Sir 

 Arthur Evans in Crete. The committee, in recom- 

 mending the renewal of a grant of loZ. for the in- 

 vestigations carried on by Dr. Despott, was well aware 

 of its total inadequacy, but it had to remember that 

 in these times the finances of the British Association 



