This is episode 3 called Paleolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age in Iberia and in this episode you will learn:

Show notes

• How was the Iberian Peninsula during the Prehistory, except for the Iron Age
• Remark that Prehistory is the less-known period of human history, and that new archeological or genetic findings are constantly challenging previous theories
• The archeological site of Atapuerca, the most important Prehistoric one of Spain and Europe
• The first settlers of the Iberian Peninsula
• The Cave of Altamira
• The slow process of Neolithization, first in the south and southeast and later in the north
• The urbanized and stratified town of Los Millares of the Spanish Copper Age
• Recent genetic studies that indicate that there may have been a big migration of Indo-Europeans between the Copper and Bronze Age
• The Argaric culture of the Bronze Age
• Important changes in the Late Bronze period

Script

I’m David Cot, host of The History of Spain Podcast, and this is episode 3, called Paleolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age in Iberia. In this episode you will learn how was the Iberian Peninsula during the Prehistory, except for the Iron Age that we will see in the next two episodes. Subscribe to the podcast to not miss an episode!

Okay, the first thing you have to know about Prehistory is that new archeological findings challenge the previous theories every time, and I’m not talking about Spain but in general. Therefore, take everything with a grain of salt because in the future some things that I will say may be refuted by new findings. For instance, the ‘Out of Africa’ theory has been challenged by recent evidence found in places like China or Morocco. We rely on a few skeletons and tools to determine the chronological and geographical evolution of the human species, so any new discovery made by archeologists, geneticists or anthropologists can change our entire paradigm of the origins of human beings. At least it’s safe to say, following the Out of Africa hypothesis, that the firsts Homo Sapiens went out of Africa much earlier than initially thought, in 120.000 BC, and that those Homo sapiens intermixed with the Neanderthals and Denisovan.

The oldest rests of a Homo specie in Europe was found in the most famous archeological site of Spain, Atapuerca, dating back 1’2 or 1’3 million years. The rests have yet to be identified with a known specie, but they could belong to a new one. Anyway, in the prolific prehistoric site of Atapuerca paleontologists found Homo species like the Homo antecessor, the Homo heidelbergensis, or the much more recent rests of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens.

In the Paleolithic, Europe looked very different than how it looks nowadays. Elephants, rhinos and lions lived in Europe and the north and much of central Europe was frozen. That’s why the early humans used caves as refugees. Homo species lived as nomads and hunter-gatherers, and they were also scavengers and even cannibals. Let’s picture a group of those early humans. Some did the hunting, going where the animals went to drink or graze, attacking in group, preparing ambushes. Others had the task to transport the prey, skin the game, cook or to gather fruits. We can already see social structures and specialization before the discovery of agriculture.

The first settlers of the Iberian Peninsula presumably used the Strait of Gibraltar to come in. Around 200,000 years ago the Neanderthals started to move to the Peninsula, and they weren’t wiped out at least until 28,000 years ago. Homo sapiens entered the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the Paleolithic and they coexisted with the Neanderthals during a long ass time.

Along with France, the Iberian Peninsula is one of the top regions when it comes to Paleolithic cave paintings, with the famous Cave of Altamira as the most relevant of all. The Cave of Altamira was discovered in 1868 in the northern region of Cantabria, and it’s famous for the many parietal cave paintings of the Upper Paleolithic, with some paintings made 36,000 years ago. Around 13,000 years ago a rockfall sealed the entrance of the cave, which helped to preserve the paintings. The polychromatic art displayed in the cave is astonishing, as visitors can enjoy beautiful images of steppe bison, horses and deer.  Google Cave of Altamira or go to thehistoryofspain.com because it’s impressive how humans made beautiful drawings back in the Paleolithic.

<figure class="aligncenter"><figcaption>Cave of Altamira</figcaption></figure>

Around 12,000 BC the Allerød Oscillation occurred and that changed the climate conditions, ending the last ice age. As the climate became warmer, there were technological changes and big animals like mammoths got extinct, so hunted animals became smaller and humans had to also start consuming seafood to survive. In this period called the Mesolithic we find regional differences in the industries of the Iberian Peninsula, a trend that was happening all over Europe. The most remarkable thing of this period is the rock art that can be found all over the Spanish Mediterranean Basin, especially in Valencia and Aragon. We are talking about more than 700 pieces of art from this period, which is the largest collection found in Europe. The Homo sapiens of this period didn’t only paint animals, they started painting humans as well. They showed how they used honey for instance to attract animals and hunt them, scenes of fighting and dancing, and how they already used skirts and even masks that were used by people of a certain role or status.

Moving on to the Neolithic around 6,000 BC, the Neolithic signified the widespread use of agriculture as a source of food. For the first time humans were trying to control and shape nature to satisfy their demands. The first agriculturalists probably came from North Africa with early forms of ships, as the southern region of Andalusia is the first to have signs of cultivation of food. It took more time to domesticate animals though. Later on, humans of the Peninsula started to build dolmen tombs around 4,800 BC, and to fabricate pottery. The invention of pottery is very important, as now humans were able to storage products and plan their future. All these things were signs seen pretty much everywhere in the world that indicated that societies grew larger and more complex. Nonetheless, the spread of agriculture was more limited in the interior and northern regions of Iberia.

In Cádiz, archeologists found an incredible necropolis while inspecting an area to build a hockey stadium. The necropolis is from around 4,300 BC and one of the most stunning things discovered in Cádiz is the burial of two humans, one man and one woman, intertwined and hugging, which suggests that they were lovers. Spanish archeologists also found that they incinerated domestic animals and buried them in the very same necropolis. Maybe because they loved their cats and dogs or maybe for religious rituals.

It was somewhere between the 5th and 4th millennia BC that the Balearic Islands started to be inhabited, while the first settlers of the Canary Islands moved there at the start of the Neolithic or even before, although they were Berbers from North Africa, not settlers from Iberia.

The pattern we see in the Neolithic is that Andalusia and Valencia, that is in southern and southeastern Spain, were always the first of the Peninsula to get the latest technologies, the center adopted technologies later and the north even later. I’m saying that because, even though the process of Neolithization began in the 6,000 BC, the Neolithic didn’t arrive in Asturias or Cantabria until 3,000 BC. That’s a very long time, I think that the dates matter here to get an idea of how limited cultural diffusion at the time was and how isolated the human communities were.

The main economic activity, agriculture, was focused on the cultivation of wheat and barley, although legumes were planted as well. Agriculture has two main advantages: many more people can be feed in comparison to hunting or gathering food, and it’s a safer option to be sedentary as cereals can be stored and it’s riskier to move around seeking food. It has some disadvantages as well, most notably the diet can be less balanced and less energetic, but the pros seemed to have overwhelmed the cons. Now talking about cattle, the usual domesticated animals to consume were, not surprisingly, cows, sheep, goats and pigs. Most of the rests of cattle found in the Iberian Peninsula belong the sheep and goats, I’m talking about 50 or 60% of the cattle, and that is very interesting