Before Rome

Antes de Roma

c. 15th millennium BC–218 BC. Long before anyone spoke Spanish, the Iberian Peninsula was home to Ice Age painters, then to the Bronze and Iron Age peoples whom the Greeks and Romans would…

What happened

Long before anyone spoke Spanish, the Iberian Peninsula was home to Ice Age painters, then to the Bronze and Iron Age peoples whom the Greeks and Romans would meet: the metal-rich Tartessians of the south-west, the Iberians of the east and south coasts, and the Celts and Celtiberians of the interior. From about 800 BC Phoenician traders from Tyre founded Gadir (Cádiz), and from the sixth century BC Greeks from Phocaea settled at Emporion (Empúries). Carthage later built an empire in the south. None of these peoples spoke a language ancestral to Spanish, but their place names, their cities and the silver that drew outsiders to the peninsula shaped everything that followed.

Its events

1. between 17000 BC and 12000 BC: The painters of Altamira
2. c. 8th century BC: The Phoenicians found Gadir
3. c. 8th century BC–550 BC: Tartessos, the kingdom of silver
4. c. 570s BC: Greeks settle at Emporion
5. c. 5th century BC: Iberians, Celts and Celtiberians
6. 219 BC: Hannibal takes Saguntum

Sources

1. Chronology – Cave of Altamira — Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira (Ministerio de Cultura)
2. Tartessos — World History Encyclopedia
3. Protohistory – chronological catalogue — Museo Arqueológico Nacional
4. Jaciment – Conjunt arqueològic d'Empúries — Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya
5. Second Punic War — World History Encyclopedia