Gorham’s provides ‘dramatic backdrop’ for BBC Horizon film

BBC television’s Horizon team has been filming in Gibraltar in both Gorham’s and Vanguard caves for a one-hour Horizon programme in the current series expected to air sometime in September. Horizon is the BBC’s flagship documentary series, an ongoing and long-running British television series, which began in 1964 focusing on cutting edge science. Only 15 programmes a year are made.

The working title for this programme in this latest series is the ‘Lost tribes of humanity’ and seeks to investigate a time when there were three different types of humans inhabiting the earth.

“Gorham’s will give us a dramatic opening and a real sense of connection and from where we can say ‘our most famous cousin lived here’,” says Horizon producer/director Giles Harrison.

The Neanderthals, he says, is the best known of these and the team wanted to start the programme on location in a Neanderthal site which was both “impressive and dramatic”.

The programme makers immediately felt the site at Gibraltar, the impressive Gorham’s Cave and the complex of caves in the area, would be just right for its opening sequence.

“We want to show how over the years scientists have changed the stereotype type of what Neanderthals are. We felt Gibraltar was one of the best, if not the best Neanderthal site in Europe.”

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