![]() ![]() However, these plans met with considerable resistance, particularly in the interior. Roman theatre of Mérida (Turespaña)The Romans did not just want to replace the Carthaginians, but to extend their dominion to the rest of the peninsula. ![]() ![]() Hannibal's defeat by Publius Cornelius Scipio (209 B.C.) not only marked the beginning of the end for his army in Italy it was also the beginning of the Roman conquest of Spain. ![]() While Hannibal was making his legendary journey across the Alps, the Roman legions were attacking his Spanish base at Carthago Nova (present-day Cartagena), with its seaport and mines. This conflict of interests led to the Second Punic War. The Romans were alarmed by the Carthaginian expansion to the northeast like Napoleon centuries later, they believed that the Ebro River delineated a natural boundary with Gaul, which was then a Roman province. The Roman invasion and eventual conquest of the peninsula took place over the long period between 218 and 19 B.C. In any case, it was at this point that the Iberian Peninsula as a geographic unit entered the arena of international politics and, by virtue of its privileged location between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and its rich agricultural and mineral resources in the south, became a much coveted strategic objective. The Roman presence on the peninsula basically followed the same pattern as the Greek commercial bases, but unlike the Greeks, Rome's introduction to Iberia was the result of a power struggle with Carthage to gain control of the Western Mediterranean during the 2nd century B.C. The Persistent Traces of the Roman Presence Hispania, the name the Romans gave to the peninsula, is allegedly a Semitic word derived from Hispalis (Seville). The earliest written records about the peninsula date from this period. the peoples of the coastal region generically known as Iberians had already formed a homogenous group of city- states (Tartessus, the biblical Tarshish or perhaps the legendary submerged Atlantis) influenced by the more developed urban, trading, farming and mining centres of the Eastern Mediterranean. Shepherds and sheep, the conquerors of grazing lands, played a key role in the geo-history of the Iberian Peninsula.īy contrast, in the 4th century B.C. With a relatively primitive social organisation, these peoples engaged in migratory herding, which consisted of alternating the grazing pastures in the northern uplands that they used in the summer with those of the southern part of the central plateau, or Meseta, used in the winter. The latter territory was inhabited by various tribes, some of them Celts. Hence, between the 12th and 4th centuries B.C., substantial differences emerged between the Iberia that extended from the Mediterranean in the northeast to the Atlantic in the south, and the Iberia of the peninsular inland region. At the end of this period, both civilisations were displaced by the Romans and Carthaginians respectively. until the middle of the 3rd century B.C., commercial and cultural contact with the Mediterranean civilisations was articulated by the Phoenicians (whose territories extended from the Algarve on the peninsula's South Atlantic coast to Iberia's Mediterranean shores in the east) and the Greeks (whose influence stretched from the estuary of the Ebro River to the Gulf of Roses on the north-eastern coast of Spain). and lasted until the 16th century A.D., which was characterised by the dominant role of the Mediterranean basin and civilisations.įrom approximately 1100 B.C. Another period in the history of the peninsula began around 5000 or 4000 B.C. Known as the Neolithic Revolution, this process consisted of the transition from a collector economy to a producer economy based on agriculture and stockbreeding. In any case, the remains of utensils and works of art found on the peninsula are certainly from this period, corresponding to the same hunter-gatherer cultures that existed in other parts of Europe.ĭame of Baza (Museo Arqueológico Nacional)Moreover, the Iberian Peninsula constituted the western boundary of a process of cultural dissemination that began in on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean around the fifth millennium B.C. Experts are still debating the origin of these early settlers, who may have entered the peninsula directly from Africa via the Straits of Gibraltar, but more likely arrived by crossing over the Pyrenees. From prehistoric times to the discovery of Americaīased on the findings at Atapuerca (Burgos province), estimated to be around 800,000 years old, the presence of hominids on the Iberian Peninsula dates back to the Lower Palaeolithic period. ![]()
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