A BRIEF MOMENT IN TIME ON IBERIAN HISTORY

By Brian Hall

O.K. you lot at the back, stop yawning and just before you turn the page I know that history is like so much dust on the top of a cupboard, best left alone and certainly not to draw your fingers through! But just a minute, now that you live in another country than that shown on your passport and you may not have yet (or never will) have got to grips with the language, getting to know the history of the Iberian peninsular can be fun, for once you know a little of the history you are more than half way there in knowing the people of Spain.

Why do I use the word Iberian and also the word Spain? Well, first lesson in history, Iberian means the whole of the peninsular i.e. Portugal, Spain as a whole and Andorra but not the Balearic Islands and Spain means, well Spain as a whole including all the islands, Mediterranean and Atlantic.
Ah! You say, where did Portugal go?
Well, Portugal never went anywhere, for a period of time, Portugal was part of Spain. To be exact, Portugal on 2 occasions was part of Spain but the Portuguese fought 2 wars of independence with the rest of Spain and on each occasion won, gaining independence on both occasions. Why, do you ask 2 wars if they won the first? – well, in asking this you are well on the way to understanding Spain and the Spaniard! So far so good but we are jumping the gun a little for we have to go back, — way back.

In fact almost 800,000 years ago to start our story on Iberian history.

Spain’s history can be traced back to what historians call ‘pre history’, the time when we know very little of our predecessors for they left very little of their passing through time, but here on the Iberian peninsular remains of early man were found at Gran Dolina in the Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos whilst engineers were driving a new railway through the region in 1964. These remains, proof of a new species which were named homo antecessor by Spanish archaeologists are the earliest evidence of hominids in Europe.
They in fact pre-date other European finds of early man by at least 250,000 years! Spanish history starts here but we move quickly on ( I did say in the heading that this was a ‘brief moment in time….’ to 300,000 years ago, for not far from the site at Gran Dolina where the initial find was made, a small pit was discovered which was almost full of human bone fossils dating from that period. So great was the find that 80% of all known worldwide human remains dating from that period were excavated from this small pit.
So it’s not only now that people enjoy the lifestyle of Spain, 300,000 years ago mankind found the climate here also to his liking.
Another leap forward in time brings us to the Old Stone Age and at this period there is evidence that mankind in Spain was thriving and was culturally aware of his surroundings. Cave paintings from this period abound throughout the northern area of the peninsular and into what we now call France. Interestingly, around this period of time a race of people known as the Gaunche were established on the islands we know as the Canaries. They too left cave paintings of a similar style although the perpetrators are thought to have originated from North Africa.

When the Canaries were populated by Spaniards in the 15th C. descendants of the Gaunche were still living on the islands but the Spaniards quickly saw to the end of them, after all, at this time Spain was an expanding country fired with a mission, that of spreading Christianity at the point of a sword, however, we digress and there’s more of that to come later.

By the time of the New Stone age things were really pacing ahead. The climate was beginning to get warmer (that seems to ring a bell) and there is evidence that other races entered the peninsular from Northern Africa and that they actually built primitive rock shelters rather than to live in caves. Evidence of painting to depict life at that time still remains although in a more primitive form than  that of previous inhabitants. They still hunted their food, farming at this stage throughout Europe wasn’t even thought of.

Around 5000BC, is considered the dawn of civilization. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, a great revolution in the progress of mankind was underway. The plough had been developed and cultivation of land to produce food was afoot. Cattle had been domesticated and wheat grown in relative abundance. Food was plentiful and population growth was accelerating. It took until 3000/2500 years BC for this surge to find its way onto the peninsular either from the northern costal strip of the Mediterranean or from North Africa but by 2000BC it was well established around all the coastline of the Mediterranean. It is at this time, 2,500BC that a development began that was to forge along with other milestones in history the race that we know today as the Spaniard.

The area around Almeria quickly grew to adopt this new concept of living. People settled there and the area thrived using the new technology of the era. A race of people escaping the creeping sands of North Africa moved in the area, these people could trace their ancestry way back in history to the Dravidian speakers of southern India. This part of the peninsular was to become a great big melting pot from which the Spaniard would rise.

The Bronze Age followed and the copper deposits in and around Almeria were exploited to the full. Even to this day the landscape in certain areas of Almeria is racked with the scars of early mining as the earth was robbed of its ores. (The remarkable thing here is that, aprox. 2000 years B.C., the Iberian peninsular was undergoing the Bronze Age, and approx. 3500 years later, when the Spanish conquistadors were active in Latin America, they came across the same level of technology in Mexico but 3500 years later!) The Bronze Age on the peninsular and indeed elsewhere across Europe marked the end of the Stone Age and consigned weapons made of stone, flint and bone into the dustbin of history.

Bronze, a relatively hard metal or to be precise a metallic alloy, is made from copper and tin and can be worked to give a sharp semi-durable edge. It can be crafted also into fine jewellery, necklaces and wristbands. It was also used in small shields and weapons and is a considerably heavy metal. Copper and tin ores are only very rarely found to-gether, and never in Europe.

It is thought that tin used in the smelting of bronze in Spain came from Cornwall in exchange for the copper to enable the Bronze Age to develop in England, a kind of early free trade arrangement.  Further, much larger deposits of copper were to be found in great quantities in and around the River Tinto on the south-western edge of the land mass. The river rises in the Sierra Morena mountains and flows into the Gulf of Cadiz at Huelva and about this time, mining was commenced in order to reap the vast deposits of copper along the river basin. It was these large deposits of easily mined copper that gave the river its red colour even to be seen today.

Other metals that were in demand could also be found in the river bed such as silver and gold. These precious and semi precious metals were in great demand and as such the area attracted people from different areas of the then known world. Trade flourished, in particular from the eastern end of the Mediterranean.

The Phoenicians, who came from the area we now know as the Lebanon, were great traders and settled in the area around Huelva. The pace of commerce accelerated and they integrated well into the local community bringing prosperity to all. The Phoenicians were a dark coloured race, wide foreheads and high cheekbones coupled with hooked noses gave them easily identifiable features.

They also gave Spain its name, i-schephan-im, meaning land of rabbits, later this was altered to Spania then to Hispania and much later to Espana.

As trade continued to grow they established the city of Gadir of which nothing remains to-day, the site being covered in silt near to the present day city of Cadiz. Fishing also grew in strength as the Blue Fin Tuna passed through the Straits of Gibraltar on their yearly migration. These fish, numbering in their hundreds of thousands, were highly prized and were gutted, salted and dispatched throughout the known world adding to the wealth of the area.

All this trade brought in not only the Phoenicians but the Tartessians, Greeks and even the Celts who had entered the peninsular from the north. Again, this vast melting pot of races further added their genes to the already expanding gene pool from that gives us the Spaniard of to-day. However, every empire has its day and the Phoenicians, who were present not only in Spain but the coastal strip of North Africa, fought a battle with both the Assyrians (Syria) and the Babylonians (Iraq) which resulted in them retreating into the pages of history.

This left a vacuum on the western side of the Mediterranean which was quickly filled by the Greeks who established trading posts along the southern coast but mainly in present day Catalonia. The Greeks are also acknowledged to have established the olive and vine growing culture so much in evidence in Spain today and they gave us the name of Iberia, roughly meaning river and as they were predominately in what is now called Catalonia. Could this be a reference to the mighty River Ebro?

More importantly however, with the decline of Phoenicia, its colony on the northern coast of Africa, Carthage, grew in strength both in trade and warriors. The Carthaginians had a reputation of being hard nosed in driving a bargain in both buying and selling goods and they backed this up with an army of mercenaries who had a fearsome reputation, after all, who would stand a chance against the Balearic Slingers or the Namibian horsemen followed by the Libyan archers.

Matters came to a head however with the sea battle of Alalia in 535 BC. The Greek war fleet suffered a devastating defeat and Carthage claimed control of the western Mediterranean. The Carthaginians at this point did not wish to conquer Iberia; they were content to trade, albeit at their terms, but a small enclave of Phoenicians in Gadir felt threatened by the Tartessians so they asked for protection which they got at the ultimate price, they lost their enclave and their identity. Carthage now became rich in Iberian silver.

The Greeks in the meantime had regained their naval strength and fought the Carthaginians again in a sea battle this time to prevent Carthage from expanding to the eastern side of the Mediterranean. In this battle, the Greeks sought and regained their superiority. The Carthaginians, now almost bankrupt and needing to regain face, sent their army in 237 BC to Gadir with the task to totally subjugate all the southern lands of Iberia.

Its commander was Hamilcar Barca who took along with him his nine year old son, Hannibal. Battles were fought and won but as the Carthaginians moved further inland the going became tougher, the resistance increased and Hamilcar lost his life whilst fleeing from a counterattack by the Iberian Celts who were in themselves a fearsome warrior race.

His place was taken by his son-in-law, Hasdrubal Barca (the founder of Barca – Barcelona and also Cartago Nova – Cartagena) who took the young Hannibal under his wing. Hasdrubal realised that he had to win over the Iberians rather than fight them so an uneasy agreement was reached which was to cost Hasdrubal his life. He was assassinated by an Iberian slave seeking revenge over the death of a native leader. This one act of assassination was to prove a pivotal point in the slowly swinging pendulum of time. History had reached a crossroad for there now arrived on the scene the one man who would threaten the very centre of the Roman Empire, – Imperial Rome, and in doing so would bring the Romans to Spain. Hannibal was centre stage and ready.

Next month —– The Romans are coming!

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Posted by editor on 2010-04-04 Filed under April 2010, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry