The whole issue has been usefully reviewed with much of the supporting data by Straus
(2001). He concludes not only thatNeanderthals did not cross the strait of Gibraltar intoNorth
Africa, but also that their sanctuary in southern Spain was safe because the anatomically
and culturally more advanced contemporaries in mid-Upper Pleistocene north Africa did not
cross into Spain. The cultural contrasts across the Strait remain through the Aterian of the
Maghreb Middle Palaeolithic. Straus’s findings are that “for the upper Pleistocene, it is only
in the terminal Palaeolithic that. . .a credible case can be made for trans-Gibraltar human
contact” (Straus, 2001, p. 91). But arguably the limits on cultural contact across the Strait
remained at least into the Upper Palaeolithic (Close, in press)