Jersey's top holidaymakers? Neanderthals, research says

Thursday 15 December 2016

Islanders might fondly recall the day of Pontins, fun fairs, Fort Regent and the beach bronzing joviality of the 70s and 80s - but they might be surprised to learn that Jersey's true tourism heyday was over 100,000 years ago.

Neanderthals had a soft spot for visiting Jersey, according to new research from the University of Southampton, with La Cotte de St Brelade a favourite haunt.

A re-examination of the coastal cave zone – described by a leading researcher as “probably the most important Neanderthal site in northern Europe” – revealed that our ancestors kept returning from at least 180,000 years ago until around 40,000 years ago.

Backed by experts from three other universities and the British Museum, Southampton archeologists freshly examined artefacts and mammoth bones found at the site’s granite cliffs in the 1970s.

Careful research involving matching stone raw material used for tool-making with geology of the sea bed helped the expert term to gain an insight into where Neanderthals picked up their resources – and, crucially, where they were travelling from. 

The findings have since been published in the journal Antiquity.
 

NEW Persistent places: the #Palaeolithic La Cotte de St Brelade, #Jersey
Shaw et al on #Neanderthals & placehttps://t.co/WqDsHV443g [£] pic.twitter.com/oZrWasC8x3

— Antiquity (@AntiquityJ) November 25, 2016

Lead author of the study, Dr Andy Shaw of the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of Southampton, described La Cotte as a “special place for Neanderthals”.

“They kept making deliberate journeys to reach the site over many, many generations. We can use the stone tools they left behind to map how they were moving through landscapes, which are now beneath the English Channel. 180,000 years ago, as ice caps expanded and temperatures plummeted, they would have been exploiting a huge offshore area, inaccessible to us today," he said. 

But why were the ancient tourists so keen on coming back? According to Dr Beccy Scott of the British Museum, “what drew them to Jersey so often is harder to tease out.”

“It might have been that the whole Island was highly visible from a long way off - like a waymarker - or people might have remembered that shelter could be found there, and passed that knowledge on."

Visit Jersey say that the homo neanderthalensis travellers are proof of the Island's enduring appeal:

“The Neanderthals were the first visitors to the island and their legacy is still attracting visitors today. La Cotte is a site of international significance, we are very fortunate to have this in Jersey as part of a fascinating and wide ranging historic offering for visitors.”

Olga Finch, Curator of Archaeology at Jersey Heritage, told Express that the Antiquity paper was "important because it showcases not only the calibre of work undertaken, but also the value of Jersey’s ancient heritage on a global scale."

"These findings have been interpreted in our major exhibition at Jersey Museum this year and I would urge people to go and see it to gain an understanding of just how important the site at La Cotte de St Brelade really is.”