scattered and with fewer than half the bones still present, but with the remains of the female’s skeletal arms tenderly cradling the remains of the child to her skeletal breast. The conclusion was inescapable: they were mother and child. Nothing like this had ever been seen before in a Stone Age burial. The poignant photographs, retouched for emphasis but essentially accurate, that were shown on TV news programs from pole to pole, soon established them as Gibraltar Woman and Gibraltar Boy: the First Family.
That would have been extraordinary enough, but when the bones were sent to the Horizon Foundation’s anthropology laboratory for detailed study by an interdisciplinary team, the results were even more amazing. The three-person team, of which Gideon was the lead scientist, issued a thorough, meticulous report indicating that the female, who was in her mid-twenties (an old woman in Paleolithic terms), was not Neanderthal at all, but human. This sent a shock wave through the world of prehistoric archaeology: it had now been irrefutably shown for the first time that humans and Neanderthals could and did live together, at least in this one case, and that the human – an outsider, an alien female – had been ceremonially buried with the love and respect due a member of the clan. (The ceremonial nature of the burial was established by red stains on the bones, indicating that the bodies had been wrapped in an ocher-stained skin, the pigment of which had been absorbed by the skeletons as the shroud decayed.)
As spectacular as that was, it was the examination of Gibraltar Boy that opened up even more stunning avenues of conjecture and dispute. The child, it seemed, could arguably be described as combining characteristics of both Neanderthals and humans. Despite the intriguing possibilities that this raised, Gideon was determined that the team’s report would not be a source of controversy – and especially of controversy based on insufficient data. Just the facts, ma’am. No theoretical stands were taken, no sweeping conclusions were drawn.
Of course, others did draw them. To the proponents of human-Neanderthal interbreeding, here was concrete evidence that mating had occurred. A few – a very few – other skeletons had been found that seemed to exhibit similar blends of human and Neanderthal traits, but the noninterbreeding proponents had argued them away as mere variations of either Neanderthals or humans, well within the range of variation to be found in any species.
But never had a find like this been made in such affecting circumstances. That the two skeletons were mother and son, few who had seen the photographs doubted. And what could the boy’s human-Neanderthal mixture of traits (if such it was) mean other than that he was a hybrid, that he had mixed parentage? His mother was indisputably human. His father had to have been Neanderthal. A human woman had mated with a Neanderthal male many thousands of years ago, and they had produced a child, quickly dubbed Gibraltar Boy in both the popular and scientific press. In actuality, it was a misnomer; one that had always bothered Gideon. The child was only about four years old, too young to determine the sex from the available bones, and he had clearly indicated as much in the report. Nevertheless, some reporter’s appellation of “Gibraltar Boy” had caught the popular imagination, and it had stuck. Gibraltar Boy he was, and Gibraltar Boy he would always be, and the objections of a few stuffy pedants like Gideon Oliver weren’t going to change matters.
In any case, as far as the human-Neanderthal-admixture-theory people were concerned, the argument was settled. When you were talking about things that had happened more than twenty millennia ago, how could you ask for more solid proof than this? In the popular mind as well, the theory was now a fact, but scientists were still divided. The no-mixing contingent suffered quite a few defectors, but many refused to throw in the towel. The embattled true believers fought on, claiming that the measurements were inconclusive and fragmentary (which they were); the so-called human traits were ambiguous, mere within-species variations. Not all Neanderthals looked alike, not all chimpanzees looked alike, and not all human beings looked alike. The boy was, like his mother, a Neanderthal, pure and simple. A little less chunky than most, maybe, but Neanderthal all the same.
So what was a human woman doing buried in a Neanderthal rock shelter with a Neanderthal child in her arms? Who knew? Maybe she was the original nanny. Captured as a slave, perhaps. Or maybe she was an outcast from her own group who had been accepted into the Neanderthal fold. But then why was she buried with the child? Who could say? But to build from this scanty, questionable evidence, the conclusion that they were human mother and human-Neanderthal offspring? No, they would need a lot more evidence before they accepted that.
In the larger world, however, there was no longer any debate, especially after Who We Are: The Legacy of the First Family, The Learning Channel’s highest-rated series ever, was shown, hosted by Gunderson himself at his urbane, avuncular best. In the popular mind, intergroup mixing between humans and Neanderthals was now a fact. (You couldn’t say “interspecies mixing” anymore, as Gunderson lucidly, if a bit simplistically, explained, because the biological definition of species turned on the idea that only members of the same species could interbreed.) The fight was over.
The reverberations were felt not only in the world of prehistoric anthropology, but throughout the social sciences. For one thing, the theory that the Neanderthals had become extinct because their rivals, the more advanced Homo sapiens, had wiped them off the face of the earth by either ruthless, outright aggression or by outcompeting them for scarce resources took a major hit. Proponents of this theory, while unconvinced by the find, were forced to retreat to their ivory towers, muttering and licking their wounds. More broadly, the study of the relationships between more and less advanced societies was given new life. And champions of multiculturalism had a new and appealing poster child. (If Neanderthals and early humans could get along well enough to produce a child, and if the human mother of that child was lovingly taken in by the child’s extended Neanderthal family, then surely we humans of merely different skin colors – genetically so much closer to each other – could hope to get along too… could we not?)
Gideon’s story took them through their main course – they both had had the smoked salmon fettuccine – at the Bella Italia on Front Street, and Julie nodded as he finished.
“Okay, thanks. I think I get the picture now.”
“You managed to stay awake the whole time?”
“Oh, there may have been a teeny-weeny lapse or two, right around the mitochondrial DNA part, but I managed to get most of it.”
Their waiter, Bruce, finished clearing away their dinner plates and offered them a dessert menu.
“Just a latte for me,” Julie said, fending it off.
“And I’ll have an espresso,” said Gideon.
Bruce feigned shock. “No postre? But our chef della pasticceria will be grossly offended. I fear to tell him.” Bruce had served them many a fine meal and had earned the right to talk with them like this.
“Oh, in that case…,” said Julie, snatching back the menu and poring over it. “Gideon, will we be able to get zabaglione in Gibraltar?”
“I doubt it. It’s pretty British there, from what I hear. Pasties, gateaux, trifle, yes. Probably Spanish and Moroccan food too, I’d guess. Zabaglione? Don’t count on it.”
“Well, then, you’d better have it here,” Bruce said reasonably.
Gideon handed back the dessert menu. “Makes sense to me.”
THREE
“It’s so tiny,” Julie said disappointedly, her face pressed to the window of seat 17A.
As indeed it was. They were nearing the end of their three-hour flight from London, and from the air Gibraltar was a bit of a let-down, an insignificant little worm of a peninsula – shaped remarkably like a human vermiform appendix, Gideon thought – sticking improbably out into the Mediterranean from the vast, flat mainland of Andalusian Spain. They could easily see the whole of it from their seats over the wing as the Boeing 747 banked out over the Strait: the humped mass of the famed Rock itself, surrounded by its skirt of flat, coastal plain, with almost all of its population of thirty thousand crowded into the narrow, dense warren of streets at the base of its western flank.
“It is, isn’t it?” Gideon agreed. “I imagine it’ll look more impressive when we’re down there looking up at it.”
“Oh, it will, it will, I can assure you of that.” The affable, self-possessed voice, borne on a faint waft of Irish whiskey, came from 18B in the row behind them. “And more impressive still when you’re standing on top of the Rock looking down over the edge.”
