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Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula, also known as Iberia, is located in the southwest corner of Europe. The peninsula is principally divided between Spain
and Portugal, comprising most of their territory. It also includes Andorra, and a small part of France along the peninsula's northeastern edge,
as well as Gibraltar on its south coast, a small peninsula that forms an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.
With an area of approximately 582000 km2, it is the second largest European peninsula, after the Scandinavian.
Greek name
The word Iberia is a noun adapted from the Latin word "Hiberia" originated by the Ancient Greek word Ἰβηρία
by Greek geographers under the rule of the Roman Empire to refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula. At that time,
the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabo's 'Iberia' was delineated from Keltikē
by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass southwest of there. The noun "Hiberia" fell into disuse when the Romans decided
to call the most western part of the peninsula "Lusitania" and the remaining territory "Hispania". With the fall of the Roman Empire
and the establishment of the new Castillian language in Spain, the word "Iberia" appeared
for the first time in use as a direct 'descendant' of the Greek word "Ἰβηρία" and the Roman word "Hiberia".
The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians, by voyaging westward on the Mediterranean.
Hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia, which he wrote about circa 500 BC.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that "it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with. Iberia." According to Strabo,
prior historians used Iberia to mean the country "this side of the Ἶβηρος " as far north as the river Rhône in France,
but currently they set the Pyrenees as the limit. Polybius respects that limit,
but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, with the Atlantic side having no name. Elsewhere he says that Saguntum is
"on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia." Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people
"of the Iberian stock" living in the Pyrenees, who are distinct from either Celts or Celtiberians.
Roman names
According to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia as synonyms. The confusion of the words was,
because of an overlapping in political and geographic perspectives. The Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia, literally translates to
"land of the Hiberians". This word was derived from the river Ebro, which the Romans called Hiberus. Hiber was thus used as a term
for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BC. Virgil refers
to the Ipacatos Hiberos in his Georgics. The Roman geographers and other prose writers
from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania.
As they became politically interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior
and Hispania Ulterior for 'near' and 'far' Hispania. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces: Hispania Baetica,
Hispania Tarraconensis, and Hispania Lusitania. Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously,
distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces.
Whatever language may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones,
which was preserved as a language isolate by the barrier of the Pyrenees.
Etymology
 [^]  The Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the Ebro, Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin.
The association was so well known it was hardly necessary to state; for example, Ibēria was the country "this side of the Ibērus" in Strabo.
Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called "the whole of Spain" Hiberia, because of the Hiberus River.
The river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BC between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro.
The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian, uses Ibērus. With reference to this border, Polybius states that the "native name"
is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination. The early range of these natives, which geographers
and historians place from today's southern Spain to today's southern France along the Mediterranean coast, is marked
by instances of a readable script expressing a yet unknown language, dubbed "Iberian." Whether this was the native name or was given to them
by the Greeks for their residence on the Ebro remains unknown.
Credence in Polybius imposes certain limitations on etymologizing: if the language remains unknown, the meanings of the words, including Iber,
must also remain unknown. In modern Basque, the word ibar means "valley" or "watered meadow", while ibai means "river",
but there is no proof relating the etymology of the Ebro River with these Basque names. In Serbia, there is river Ibar,
but there is no proof relating the etymology of the Ebro River with this Serbian river name.
Palaeolithic
The Iberian Peninsula has been inhabited for at least 1.2 million years as remains found in the sites in the Atapuerca Mountains demonstrate.
Among these sites is the cave of Gran Dolina, where six hominin skeletons, dated between 780,000 and one million years ago, were found in 1994.
Experts have debated whether these skeletons belong to the species Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, or a new species called Homo antecessor.
Around 200,000 BP, during the Lower Paleolithic period, Neanderthals first entered the Iberian Peninsula. Around 70,000 BP,
during the Middle Paleolithic period, the last glacial event began and the Neanderthal Mousterian culture was established. Around 37,000 BP,
during the Upper Paleolithic, the Neanderthal Châtelperronian cultural period began. Emanating from Southern France,
this culture extended into the north of the peninsula. It continued to exist until around 30,000 BP, when Neanderthal man faced extinction.
About 40,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans entered the Iberian Peninsula from Southern France. Here,
this genetically homogeneous population, developed the M343 mutation, giving rise to Haplogroup R1b, still the most common in modern Portuguese
and Spanish males. On the Iberian Peninsula, modern humans developed a series of different cultures, such as the Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean
and Magdalenian cultures, some of them characterized by the complex forms of the art of the Upper Paleolithic.
Neolithic
During the Neolithic expansion, various megalithic cultures developed in the Iberian Peninsula. An open seas navigation culture
from the east Mediterranean, called the Cardium culture, also extended its influence to the eastern coasts of the peninsula,
possibly as early as the 5th millennium BC. These people may have had some relation to the subsequent development of the Iberian civilization.
Chalcolithic
In the Chalcolithic, a series of complex cultures developed that would give rise to the peninsula's first civilizations and
to extensive exchange networks reaching to the Baltic, Middle East and North Africa. Around 2800 – 2700 BC, the Beaker culture,
which produced the Maritime Bell Beaker, probably originated in the vibrant copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary in Portugal and spread
from there to many parts of western Europe.
Bronze Age
Bronze Age cultures developed beginning c.1800 BC, when the civilization of Los Millares was followed by that of El Argar. From this centre,
bronze technology spread to other cultures like the Bronze of Levante, South-Western Iberian Bronze and Las Cogotas. In the Late Bronze Age,
the urban civilisation of Tartessos developed in the area of modern western Andalusia, characterized by Phoenician influence
and using the Southwest Paleohispanic script for its Tartessian language, not related to the Iberian language. Early in the first millennium BC,
several waves of Pre-Celts and Celts migrated from Central Europe, thus partially changing the peninsula's ethnic landscape
to Indo-European-speaking in its northern and western regions. In Northwestern Iberia, a Celtic culture developed, the Castro culture,
with a large number of hill forts and some fortified cities.
Proto-history
By the Iron Age, starting in the 7th century BC, the Iberian Peninsula consisted of complex agrarian and urban civilizations, either Pre-Celtic
or Celtic, the cultures of the Iberians in the eastern and southern zones
and the cultures of the Aquitanian in the western portion of the Pyrenees. The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks
and Carthaginians successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over a period of several centuries.
Around 1100 BC, Phoenician merchants founded the trading colony of Gadir or Gades near Tartessos. In the 8th century BC, the first Greek colonies,
such as Emporion, were founded along the Mediterranean coast on the east, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians.
The Greeks coined the name Iberia, after the river Iber. In the sixth century BC, the Carthaginians arrived in the peninsula while struggling
with the Greeks for control of the Western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago Nova.
Roman rule
 [^]  In 218 BC, during the Second Punic War against the Carthaginians, the first Roman troops invaded the Iberian Peninsula; however,
it was not until the reign of Augustus that it was annexed after two centuries of war with the Celtic and Iberian tribes and the Phoenician, Greek
and Carthaginian colonies. The result was the creation of the province of Hispania. It was divided into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior
during the late Roman Republic, and during the Roman Empire, it was divided into Hispania Tarraconensis in the northeast,
Hispania Baetica in the south and Lusitania in the southwest. Hispania supplied the Roman Empire with silver, food, olive oil, wine, and metal.
The emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Theodosius I, the philosopher Seneca the Younger, and the poets Martial and Lucan were born
from families living on the Iberian Peninsula.
Germanic kingdoms
 [^]  In the early fifth century, Germanic peoples invaded the peninsula, namely the Suebi, the Vandals and their allies, the Alans.
Only the kingdom of the Suebi would endure after the arrival of another wave of Germanic invaders, the Visigoths,
who conquered all of the Iberian Peninsula and expelled or partially integrated the Vandals and the Alans.
The Visigoths eventually conquered the Suebi kingdom and its capital city, Bracara, in 584–585.
They would also conquer the province of the Byzantine Empire of Spania in the south of the peninsula and the Balearic Islands.
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