Devil's Tower Cave
Devil's Tower Cave is a small limestone cave in Gibraltar, a British territory at the southern tip of Spain. The cave is a narrow crack in the cliff, about 10 meters high and roughly 1 meter wide, stretching about four meters into the rock. The floor sits about 9 meters above sea level. Gibraltar is sometimes called the Hill of Caves because the area has many limestone caves.
The cave was first explored by English ornithologist Col. William Willoughby Cole Verner and the French archaeologist L’Abbé Breuil. In 1917 they found Neanderthal stone tools and animal bones, but were stopped by a police officer. They returned in 1919 with a permit and found more remains, including flint tools, bones, and shells, suggesting Neanderthals used the site and cooked food there. Nearby Forbes' Quarry Cave had yielded Gibraltar 1, a famous Neanderthal skull, a few years earlier.
Between 1925 and 1927, Dorothy Garrod of Cambridge University led a thorough excavation and discovered Gibraltar 2, a Neanderthal skull belonging to a child about four years old.
In 2018 the Government of Gibraltar recognized Devil's Tower Cave under the Heritage and Antiquities Act, noting its status as a Mousterian shelter and the site of the Neanderthal skull discoveries.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 09:03 (CET).