Prehistoric Portugal

This article spans the prehistory of Portugal from the appearance of the first human populations until the arrival of the Phoenicians in the Iberian Peninsula and the first recorded contacts with other European cultures. Portugal has been inhabited for at least 500,000 years, first by Neanderthals and then by homo sapiens.

Paleolithic

Homo neanderthalensis La Ferrassie 1

In the 200th millennium BC, during the Paleolithic period the Neanderthal Man first entered the Iberian peninsula establishing the Mousterian culture around the 70th millennium BC. In the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic occurred the first large settlement of Europe by Modern Humans, Nomadic Hunter-gathereres coming from the of the Steppes of Central Asia, characterized by the M173 mutation in the Y chromosome, defining them as an Haplogroup R population. These humans would only reach the Iberian Peninsula during the 30th millennium BC. When the Ice Age reached its maximum extent, these modern humans took refuge in Southern Europe, namely in Iberia, and in the steppes of southern Ukraine and Russia coexisting with Neanderthal men. Between the 35th and 33rd millennium BC the Neanderthal Châtelperronian and Modern Human Aurignacian cultures entered the Iberian Peninsula.

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Between the 20th and 15th millennium BC the Solutrean and Magdalenian cultural periods flourished in Europe. The Pre-historic art in the Valley of Foz Côa (near moder Vila Nova de Foz Côa, in Portugal) is one example of Solutrean cultural period.

In the 10th millennium BC an interstadial deglaciation called Allerød Oscillation occurred weakening the rigorous conditions of the Ice Age. This also ended the Upper Palaeolithic period, beginning the Mesolithic. The populations sheltered in Iberia, descendants of the Cro-Magnon, given the deglaciation, migrated and recolonized all of Western Europe, thus spreading the R1b Haplogroup populations (still dominat, in variant degrees, from Iberia to Scandinavia). During this time, the Azilian culture in Southern France and Northern Iberia (to the mouth of the Douro river) is noteworthy, as well as the Muge Culture in the Tagus valley.

In the 5th millennium BC, with the beginning of the Neolithic in the Iberian peninsula starter an autochthonous development of Agriculture. Also the Megalithic European culture spread to most of Europe and had one of its oldest and main centres in the territory of modern Portugal[link]. Meanwhile, the Nomadic Hunter-gathereres of the R Haplogroup (caracterized by the M173 mutation in the Y chromosome) that had taken refuge during the Last Ice Age in the Steppes of southern Ukraine and Russia (and had developed the M17 mutation, originating the R1a Haplogroup), gave rise to the Proto-Indo-European cultures (predecessors of the Indo-European population and their languages), such as the Kurgan culture. In the 3rd millennium BC the Chalcolithic culture of Vila Nova, a Megalithic European culture around the area of modern Lisbon, appeared. In the same period the Beaker culture spread to most of Western Europe (Portugal, Spain, France [excluding the central massif], Great Britain and Ireland, the Low Countries, and Germany from the Elbe valley west, with an extension along the upper Danube into the Vienna basin in Austria, with Mediterranean outposts on Sardinia and Sicily).

A Castro village in Castro de Baroña, Galicia, Spain

During the 1st millennium BC a first wave of Indo-European migrations, of the Urnfield culture (Proto-Celts), went to Iberia. This triggered the beginning of the Bronze culture (Indo-European) in the Northwest of the peninsula (modern Galicia and northern Portugal), that maintained commercial relations with Brittany and the British Isles. It was during this period that the Castro Village culture emerged in this Iberian area. During the next centuries the Bronze culture would arrive in the Portuguese Estremadura (not Indo-European) and Beira Alta (not Indo-European but influenced by). Approaching the Iron Age, the Tartessian society in the territory of modern Andalusia, started to emerge.

See also

• Timeline of Portuguese history
• *Timeline of Portuguese history (Pre-Roman)

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