Chapter - 3 PREHISTORIC MINORCA
 
 

The classical author Diodoro of Sicily, writing in the first century AD, quotes Timeo as saying about 350 BC: 'Off the coasts of Spain are groups of islands the Greeks call "Gymnesias", because the inhabitants go about naked during the summer.' In Minorca they lived in caves in the cliffs and rocks, and because of their marauding habits have been likened to beachcombers. Recent carbon-14 dating has resulted in pushing back by nearly 2,000 years previous estimates of the arrival of these Neolithic men. There is now evidence of human presence as far back as about 4000 BC. When Homer was writing about 800 BC of the legendary adventures of Odysseus in the Western Mediterranean, Minorca had probably been inhabited for 2,000 years.
The detective story starts with the discovery in 1909 of the remains of Myotragus balearicus, an extinct Balearic mountain antelope, believed to have died out long before man's arrival on the island.

In 1958 the American archaeologist W. Waldren, working in Majorca, made a large find of bones of this animal, which gave a carbon-14 date of 5184 BC (plus or minus eighty years), proving that the antelope had survived until a later date than previously supposed. The breakthrough came in 1962 when the Minorcan archaeologist Sr G. Florit Piedrabuena found in a cave (Cova Murada, at Algendar, near Ciudadela) horns of an antelope which had been trimmed to form a tool, with Neolithic globular pottery in the same stratum. 
This proved that man and Myotragus were contemporaries. Between then and 1965, he obtained further proof from five other Minorcan cave sites, which revealed similar coexisting material. In the following year carbon dating of both human and animal material in both Minorca and Majorca gave a reading of 3984 BC (plus or minus 100 years). These facts taken together confirmed man's presence in Minorca in about 4000 BC.