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Spain IBERIA
The people who were later named Iberians (or dwellers
along
the Rio Ebro) by the Greeks, migrated to Spain in the
third
millennium B.C. The origin of the Iberians is not certain,
but
archaeological evidence of their metallurgical and
agricultural
skills supports a theory that they came from the eastern
shores
of the Mediterranean Sea. The Iberians lived in small,
tightly
knit, sedentary tribal groups that were geographically
isolated
from one another. Each group developed distinct regional
and
political identities, and intertribal warfare was endemic.
Other
peoples of Mediterranean origin also settled in the
peninsula
during the same period and, together with the Iberians,
mixed
with the diverse inhabitants.
Celts crossed the Pyrenees into Spain in two major
migrations
in the ninth and the seventh centuries B.C. The Celts
settled for
the most part north of the Rio Duero and the Rio Ebro,
where they
mixed with the Iberians to form groups called
Celtiberians. The
Celtiberians were farmers and herders who also excelled in
metalworking crafts, which the Celts had brought from
their
Danubian homeland by way of Italy and southern France.
Celtic
influence dominated Celtiberian culture. The Celtiberians
appear
to have had no social or political organization larger
than their
matriarchal, collective, and independent clans.
Another distinct ethnic group in the western Pyrenees,
the
Basques, predate the arrival of the Iberians. Their
pre-Indo-
European language has no links with any other language,
and
attempts to identify it with pre-Latin Iberian have not
been
convincing. The Romans called them Vascones, from which
Basque is
derived.
The Iberians shared in the Bronze Age revival (1900 to
1600
B.C.) common throughout the Mediterranean basin. In the
east and
the south of the Iberian Peninsula, a system of
city-states was
established, possibly through the amalgamation of tribal
units
into urban settlements. Their governments followed the
older
tribal pattern, and they were despotically governed by
warrior
and priestly castes. A sophisticated urban society emerged
with
an economy based on gold and silver exports and on trade
in tin
and copper (which were plentiful in Spain) for bronze.
Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians competed with
the
Iberians for control of Spain's coastline and the
resources of
the interior. Merchants from Tyre may have established an
outpost
at Cadiz, "the walled enclosure," as early as 1100 B.C. as
the
westernmost link in what became a chain of settlements
lining the
peninsula's southern coast. If the accepted date of its
founding
is accurate, Cadiz is the oldest city in Western Europe,
and it
is even older than Carthage in North Africa. It was the
most
significant of the Phoenician colonies. From Cadiz,
Phoenician
seamen explored the west coast of Africa as far as
Senegal, and
they reputedly ventured far out on the Atlantic.
Greek pioneers from the island of Rhodes landed in
Spain in
the eighth century B.C. The Greek colony at Massilia
(later
Marseilles) maintained commercial ties with the
Celtiberians in
what is now Catalonia (Spanish, Cataluna; Catalan,
Catalunya). In
the sixth century B.C., Massilians founded a polis at
Ampurias,
the first of several established on the Mediterranean
coast of
the peninsula.
Data as of December 1988
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