FHUHS Spanish

Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula

hoy es miércoles el 23 de mayo de 2012

The Iberian peninsula has been continuously occupied by the genus Homo for well over 1 million years. Initial population migrations probably consisted of members of the Homo antesessor and/or Homo erectus species, with subsequent immigrations of Homo heidelbergensis. Later occupations by Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens also entered the peninsula, and Iberia may have seen the last populations of Neanderthals in all of Europe, having been pushed out of the rest of Europe by Homo sapiens population expansion.

These early hominids (ie, pre-sapiens, must have entered the peninsula by crossing the Pyrenees mountains as they didn’t have boat technologies to cross from northern Africa. The earliest archaeological evidence of occupation on the Iberian peninsula is at a large site collectively known as “Atapuerca.”

Note that in this course to refer to dates we will use the scientifically accepted notation of B.C.E., and C.E. (Before the Common Era and the Common Era, respectively). The various texts we will read will use varying nomenclatures, but we use the BCE/CE notation.

Readings: Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula

• Website of the Atapuerca Foundation
• Introduction, The Story of Spain, by Mark Williams (read online)
• Chapter One, “In the beginning was Iberia”, The Story of Spain, by Williams (handout)

Videos: Prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula

• General Geography of the Iberian Peninsula (This is an 11 min. streamed video in Spanish. View it for the imagery to get a sense of the terrain and geography of the peninsula.)
• Video of the paintings at Altamira

Podcasts: Earlier date for European Stone tool making

• Journal Nature Podcast, 3 September 2009 (the report on handaxes in Spain starts 6 minutes into the podcast):
  

Maps (may require a PDF viewer)

• Terrain map of the Mediterranean
• Terrain map of the Iberian Peninsula
• Ethnographic map of Pre-Roman Iberia

Atapuerca

Atapuerca, just a few kilometers outside of Burgos on the Camino de Santiago, is the most important archaeological site in Europe and possibly in the world. Items of archaeological significance at Atapuerca include:

• the earliest known hominids found in Europe
• the most complete human skull in the world’s fossil record
• the earliest solid evidence of cannibalism | Nat. Institute of Health | The Independent | Univ. Cal. Sta. Barbara
• the oldest evidence of symbolic behavior among humanoids (a 400,000 year old hand axe dubbed ‘exalibur’ associated with a burial, secondary burial and de-fleshing of the bones)
• three-fourths of all known human remains worldwide from the middle Pleistocene (780,000-125,000 BCE)

Atapuerca has been occupied periodically for over 1.2 million years and has yielded the largest number of associated human fossil remains of any archaeological site worldwide.

• Fundación Atapuerca (content available in English and Spanish by clicking the UK or Spanish flags)
• The American Museum of Natural History
• Archaeology.org
• Anthropology.net (report on 1.2 million year old tooth found at Sima del elefante)
• National Academy of Sciences (examination of the mandible with evidence cited for the species Homo antessesor)
• Smithsonian (brief article regarding the Sima de los Huesos and possible symbolic behavior)
• Gran Dolina, Atapuerca

Gibraltar Woman

In 1848 the skull of a woman was discovered at the foot of the Rock of Gibralter’s North face. Eight years later an another clearly related skull was discovered in the Neander Valley of Germany. Even though the Gibraltar Woman was discovered first, this species came to be known Neanderthal Man. The last Neanderthals probably reached extinction on the Iberian peninsula about 25-30,000 BCE (the last known populations in Europe), and these last occupations may have in fact been isolated to the area around Gibralter.

Altamira

Discovered in 1879 CE by a Spanish Marquis and his daughter, who called out “Bulls, bulls” when she discovered the painted ceiling. The bulls she had found were in fact bison from among the 150+ animals painted on the ceiling. The art at Altamira is representative of the Magdelenian culture of the upper paleolithic (later old stone age), dating to approximately 15,000-12,000 BCE.

• Museo de Altamira (content in English and Spanish.)
• New World Encyclopedia
• Sample Images: One | Two | Three | Four | Five

The Neolithic in Iberia: The culture of Almería

The Neolithic, or “new stone age” is considered to have begun about 5000 BCE in Mesopotamia and Egypt, arriving in the Iberian peninsula around 3000 BCE either through the Eastern Mediterrean, from Egypt along the North African coast, and possibly by sea. Neolithic cultural innovations include such things as:

• farming with the plow
• wheat cultivation
• animal husbandry
• the use and fabrication of polished stone implements
• basketry, pottery, and weaving
• long term settlements and fortifications
• increasingly sophisticated funereal rites
• very early use of copper

By approximately 2500 BCE, neolithic culture was well established in southeastern Iberia, centered on the copper deposits in the area. The mineral resources allowed experimentation with the use of bronze (a mixture of copper and tin), and saw the first architectural flourish on the peninsula known frequently as the “era of megaliths.” These massive stone constructions pre-date Stonehenge by over 1000 years, some elements weighing in at nearly 300,000 pounds.

• Cueva de Mengas

The Bronze Age

The mixing of copper and tin in the correct proportions brought forth the bronze age. Bronze tools replaced wood, bone, antler and stone as the primary artifact-making material. On the Iberian peninsula, the Bronze Age also saw a shift of population centers from the area around Almería to the river valley of what is now known as the Guadalquivir River. Nearby mountains supplied not only the copper and tin needed for the fabrication of bronze, but large silver deposits as well. The “lost civilization of Tartessos” flourished during this period and has been the subject of much debate since the early 1920s. Greek and Biblical references to the people and culture of Tartessos abound, but apart from a very rich shipwreck and caches of jewelry, not much physical evidence remains. Most historians agree, however, that Tartessos would have represented the first fully developed indigenous culture—the first undisputed ancestors of the Iberians.

• Tartessian Language
• Tartessos (warning: this is a Wikipedia article, and while it does, at present, represent a good overview of the body of knowledge on Tartessos, it’s content is not necessarily stable and reliable in the long term)

The First Iberians

Strictly speaking the term “Iberian” refers only to the cultures of the southern and eastern portions of the Iberian peninsula, running along the Mediterranean as far as southern France. In practice, however, the term is more broadly used to refer to all of the people and cultures of Spain since the beginning of recorded history.

The true Iberians spoke a number of languages all derived from a common ancestor, and lived largely in what is modern Cataluña. The characteristics of the Iberians as described to us in the written records could well describe any modern Spaniard: individualistic, stoic, quarrelsome, devoted to bulls and horses, superstitious, and respectful of elders. While some lexical connections can be made between the first languages of the Iberians and that of modern Basque, attempts to use Basque to translate ancient Iberian texts has proven unfruitful. Still, the enigmatic Basque may be surviving descendants of the original Iberians.

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