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Chronicle I of X

Prehistoric & Ancient Iberia

Hispania

Atapuerca, the painted caves of Altamira, Tartessos, and the Carthaginians before Rome.

Span
before 218 BCE
Entries
13
  1. 800,000 BC

    Lower PalaeolithicCultural

    Homo antecessor at Atapuerca

    In the limestone karst of the Sierra de Atapuerca, bands of Homo antecessor butcher game and one another, leaving the earliest hominin remains so far known in Western Europe.

  2. 36,000 BC

    Upper PalaeolithicCultural

    The painted ceilings of Altamira

    In the Cantabrian cave of Altamira, Aurignacian and later Magdalenian artists begin a programme of painted ceilings, culminating in the great bison polychromes that would astonish nineteenth-century Europe.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere · 1
  3. 5500 BC

    Early NeolithicCultural

    Cardial farmers reach the Iberian coast

    Maritime colonists of the Cardial Ware culture beach their boats on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia, bringing wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and shell-impressed pottery to a peninsula still dominated by Mesolithic foragers.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
  4. 3200 BC

    ChalcolithicCultural

    Los Millares and the dawn of copper Iberia

    On a bluff above the Andarax river in Almería, the fortified settlement of Los Millares rises with concentric walls, bastions, and a great cemetery of tholos tombs — the type-site of Copper Age south-eastern Iberia.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
  5. 2200 BC

    Early Bronze AgePolitical

    The El Argar culture of the south-east

    Across the arid sierras of Murcia and Almería, the El Argar people build hilltop towns of stone, bury their dead in jars beneath house floors, and forge bronze weapons of unprecedented quality for Bronze Age Iberia.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
  6. 1100 BC

    Phoenician IberiaPolitical

    Phoenicians found Gadir

    Tyrian traders, drawn by the silver of Tartessos and the tin of the Atlantic, plant the colony of Gadir on a string of islands beyond the Pillars of Heracles — the future Cádiz, the oldest continuously inhabited city of Western Europe.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
  7. 700 BC

    Tartessian IberiaPolitical

    The kingdom of Tartessos

    Around the lower Guadalquivir flourishes Tartessos, the half-mythical kingdom of King Arganthonios, exporting silver and tin to the Phoenicians and Greeks and minting the first orientalising art of the West.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3
  8. 575 BC

    Greek coloniesPolitical

    Phocaean Greeks found Emporion

    On the rocky shore of the Gulf of Roses in north-eastern Iberia, settlers from Phocaean Massalia plant the colony of Emporion — the 'Trading Place' — which will remain the principal Greek foothold in the peninsula for half a millennium.

    Meanwhile, elsewhere · 3

  9. 5 more entries, to 218 BC