Tourist destinations hope to achieve longevity of interest—they want people to come back year after year. In a broad sense, some places manage to pull that off, but they generally have to change with the times in order to keep visitors coming. But one destination puts every other to shame: La Cotte de St. Brelade, on the island of Jersey, was a tourist destination for 140,000 years.
Jersey, an island in the English Channel, is home to a cave that was repeatedly visited by Neanderthals between 180,000 and 40,000 years ago. They visited that cave over multiple generations, from quite far away, before there were even maps. They also made these journeys over multiple ice ages.
“La Cotte seems to have been a special place for Neanderthals,” says study lead author Dr. Andy Shaw of the University of Southampton. “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 [due to the rise in sea levels after post-Ice Age ice cap melting].”
While there is plenty of evidence that Neanderthals were visiting La Cotte and the surrounding area for tens of thousands of years, scientists don’t know why they did so. It could have been the simple fact that there was shelter available there, or that it was a pretty noticeable landmark. Maybe there were spiritual or cultural reasons to go there. Maybe it was just a convenient place to shelter while on a longer journey.
Discoveries like this are allowing archaeologists to learn more about Neanderthals each year. What is clear, despite the information that still remains to be deciphered about Jersey and what it means to prehistoric society, is that humans, and our close ancestors, have been quite mobile throughout the millennia.
This study of Neanderthals in Jersey shows us that it’s safe to say travel has been in our blood since the dawn of time.
Photo: Sunset and low tide at the La Corbiére Lighthouse in St. Brelade, Jersey, Channel Islands, UK. Credit: Shutterstock