 La Cotte de St Brelade | |
  location in Jersey  La Cotte de St Brelade (the United Kingdom) | |
| Alternative name | Lé Creux ès Fées |
|---|---|
| Location | St Brelade |
| Region | Jersey |
| Coordinates | 49°10′32″N 2°11′18″W / 49.17556°N 2.18833°W |
| History | |
| Periods | Paleolithic |
| Associated with | Neanderthals |
La Cotte de St Brelade is a Paleolithic site of early habitation in Saint Brélade, Jersey. Cotte means "cave" in Jèrriais. The cave is also known as Lé Creux ès Fées (The Fairies' Cave).[1][2]
Neanderthals lived there at various times between around 250,000 years ago and after 48,000 years ago—making it the earliest known occupation of the Channel Islands by a hominin species, and also possibly one of the last Neanderthal sites in northwestern Europe. It is the only site in the British Isles to have produced late Neanderthal fossils.[3][4]
At that time, with sea levels slightly below those at present, Jersey was part of Normandy, a peninsula jutting out from the coast, and La Cotte would have been a prominent landmark on the dry plain that linked Jersey to the French mainland. It was not until after the last Ice age that the sea eroded the coastline, separating first Guernsey, then Jersey and finally the Écréhous from the mainland.
- ^ Dictionnaire Jersiais-Français, Le Maistre 1966
- ^ Rambles among the Channel Islands, by a naturalist. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1855. p. 191.
- ^ Bates, Martin; Pope, Matthew; Shaw, Andrew; Scott, Beccy; Schwenninger, Jean-Luc (16 October 2013). "Late Neanderthal occupation in North-West Europe: rediscovery, investigation and dating of a last glacial sediment sequence at the site of La Cotte de Saint Brelade, Jersey" (PDF). Journal of Quaternary Science. 28 (7): 647–652. Bibcode:2013JQS....28..647B. doi:10.1002/jqs.2669.
- ^ "New Research Conducted at Late Neanderthal Site - Archaeology Magazine". Archaeology.org. Retrieved 20 October 2013.