UNESCO status ‘a catalyst for Neanderthal heritage’

“Welcome to the UNESCO World Heritage Site,” Professor Clive Finlayson declared with an enormous sense of satisfaction.

“I have been wanting to say that for a long time,” he told the Acting Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia, his team and the media, in one of the first organised trips to the site since the Gorham’s Cave Complex was inscribed into the World Heritage List exactly a week ago today.

For decades Professor Finlayson has believed in “the sites huge potential and its wider heritage and for Gibraltar”. Now part of the World Heritage List, he says, Gibraltar has finally been given the international recognition it deserves for the importance it has had through millennia and centuries and “why this was always one of the official wonders of the world

“It is a stamp, an accolade, a recognition which brings with it the responsibility as well,” he says to manage the site for future generations.

Professor Finlayson is in no doubt UNESCO status could act as a catalyst which will now begin to promote Neanderthal heritage, the Pillars of Hercules, etc. and the many other stories to tell in relation to the Rock’s history.

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