Neolithic and Bronze Age Spain.—The Neolithic Age in Spain testifies to a wholly different condition of mankind. Per haps it is too ingeniously simple to ascribe the naturalism of palaeolithic art to a race of hunters and the geometric conven tionalism of the neolithic to a race that tilled the soil. A fairly uni form culture spread over the entire peninsula ; for the rock-shelters with neolithic drawings have a very wide distribution and show a striking similarity. They have almost no pictorial attraction and often more resemble picture script than actual illustration. The pottery finds are the great archaeological aid to neolithic chro nology; and the occurrence of some of the conventionalized de vices of the rock-paintings upon pottery which can with certainty be assigned to the transition from neolithic to the Early Bronze Age puts the general epoch of this culture beyond doubt.
A closer comparison of ceramic types shows that beneath this superficial uniformity there lies sufficient diversity to warrant many subdivisions. Chief among these is the clear distinction be tween the more indigenous central and the south-eastern or "Al meria" culture which was probably under African influence and may actually have been the nucleus from which the true Iberian culture developed. In late neolithic times the more extensive cen tral culture exhibits a distinctive and striking bell-shaped (the so called "campaniform") pottery. At this time it is likely that there was some exportation of copper and silver from Spain to the nearest of the Mediterranean islands, since there are ceramic affinities with finds of the "aeneolithic" period (or Stone-and Copper Age, lasting in Spain from about 300o to 2500 B.c.) in the Balearics and in Sardinia and Sicily. The peculiar megalithic structures in these parts, such as the talayots of the Balearics (q.v.), the nuraghi of Sardinia (q.v.), the underground chambers of Malta, are fairly well paralleled by megalithic grave structures in Portugal and Spain. But there is as yet no certain proof of intercourse between the eastern and the western basins of the Mediterranean for these early times.
Somewhat after 2500 B.C. the Bronze Age displaced the aeneo lithic without apparent interruption ; but still the Aegean influence, which can be proved to have reached Sicily and southern Italy, failed to extend as far as Spain. If anything, the Bronze Age marks a retrogression in the civilization of Spain, where there has yet been no archaeological discovery to indicate a powerful or wealthy Bronze Age culture even remotely comparable to that of Crete or the eastern Mediterranean lands.
Tartessos.—Herodotus (iv. 152) narrates the adventurous voyage of a Greek sailing-ship from Samos, which was driven by storm past the pillars of Herakles and "at last reached Tartessos. This trading-town was in those days a virgin port unfrequented by merchants, and the Samians in consequence made a greater profit than any Greeks before their day." This event supposedly took place about 63o B.C. During the century thereafter, Tartessos was certainly frequented by trading vessels of the Ionian Greeks of Phocaea in the Bay of Smyrna. It has been maintained that this rich Spanish city on the Atlantic was the Tarshish of the Old Testament, which "with silver, iron, tin and lead" traded in the fairs of Tyre (Ezekiel xxvii. 12).
Yet the modern search for Tarshish-Tarsis-Tartessos has failed. The German archaeologist Adolf Schulten after several campaigns regretfully admitted in 1926 that the mysterious city must lie deep under river and below the groundwater level.
The Iberians.—The whole of the peninsula was sometimes called Iberia by ancient writers; but the true focus of the Iberian civilization was the south-eastern corner of the land. Here a stock out of north-east Africa (Oran?) and therefore probably Hamitic (Berber?) may have been infiltrating ever since the aeneolithic days of the Almeria culture (c. 300o B.c.). They were probably racially akin to the Tartessians, who must therefore have also been African invaders. We become completely certain of their presence towards the end of the Bronze Age and, some cen turies later, can trace the diffusion and inland penetration of their culture until it was finally absorbed by the Roman civilization almost as late as the time of Christ. Roman writers describe the typical Iberians as dark complexioned, with unkempt hair, small of face but with the cheekbones emphasized and the lower lip prominent, small-framed, alert and wiry. Iberian bronzes display them as riders of horses, and we know what their swords and daggers, spears and other weapons were like. The women are represented sometimes as wearing a singlepiece cloak drawn up over the head from the shoulders like a mantilla or shawl, and sometimes with a short, hooded garment which flares out below the waist and often has swallowtail sleeves. We may judge of their jewellery and their headdresses from the famous sculptured bust, the "Lady of Elche," now in the Louvre. Iberian art was rude but vigorous, with a leaning toward sculptured animals of stone and human figurines in bronze. The pottery was decorated with simple linear themes, artistically of no particular distinction. until Greek examples offered more sophisticated decorative motives to copy. The best Iberian art comes from the provinces of Murcia and Albacete in the south-east, where the Greek influence was strongest. The Iberians lived in walled towns. The cyclopean masonry in the bottom courses of the great walls of Tarragon is indubitably a remnant of an old Iberian stronghold. Tartessos and Massia (now Cartagena) were similarly enclosed ; but the Carthaginians completely destroyed both of these cities, making Gades (now Cadiz) take the commercial place of the former and refounding the latter as Carthago Nova. Behind this seaboard fringe of Tartesso-Iberians the high-lying interior was in the possession of a variety of indigenous peoples of whom we have no clear knowledge except that, along with Catalonia, they passed through an Early Iron Age (or "Hallstadt" phase) and were at last completely submerged during the 6th century B.c. by an invasion of Celtic tribes who poured through the Pyrenees by the Pass of Roncesvalles and took possession of Castile. This Celtic invasion may with full justice be called an historical event. We can date its occurrence within a few decades, define its source, follow its spread, and perceive its results. In the extreme northern mountain lands the earlier inhabitants managed to preserve their individuality in the face of this Celtic irruption. It has even been argued that the Basques, who maintain customs and a language whose isolation is a mark of extreme antiquity, are ultimate descendants of the palaeolithic Cantabrian folk which produced the cave-art so many thousand years earlier. Elsewhere, during the pre-Roman times, we find Celtic tribes (Beribraces, Sefes, Cempsos) in possession of the land.