La Cotte de St Brelade

La Cotte de St Brelade is a Palaeolithic site of early habitation in St Brelade, Jersey. Cotte means "cave" in Jèrriais. The cave is also known as L�...
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La Cotte de St Brelade is a Palaeolithic site of early habitation in St Brelade, Jersey. Cotte means "cave" in Jèrriais. The cave is also known as Lé Creux ès Fées (The Fairies' Cave).

Neanderthals lived there from around 250,000 years ago until between 100,000 and 47,000 years ago - making it the earliest known occupation of the Channel Islands by a hominim 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.

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.
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