The geostrategic position of Andalusia, at the southernmost tip of Europe, between Europe and Africa and between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, has made it a hub for various civilizations since the Metal Ages. Early archaeological cultures include Los Millares and El Argar in southeastern Iberia. The development of trading colonies by seafaring Phoenicians and Greeks interacted with autochthonous peoples, influencing on the development of Tartessos around the former Lacus Ligustinus and deeper inland.
With the Roman conquest, the area was integrated into the Roman world as a part of the province of Hispania Baetica, with an economy thriving from mineral extractivism in Sierra Morena and the Baetic Mountains and the agricultural development of the fertile lowlands. During this time, the Guadalquivir (Baetis) and its tributaries became a key trading axis in the region, enabling for the exportation of goods out of the province via river transport. In Late Antiquity, the area passed under control of the Vandals and the Visigoths, while part of the territory temporarily returned to Roman imperial authority under the Byzantines.
In 711, the Umayyad conquest of Hispania marked a major cultural and political shift. Córdoba became the core of al-Andalus, the Muslim-controlled part of the Iberian Peninsula, and one of the most important cultural and economic centers of the medieval world. Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, the region produced intellectual output in science, philosophy, and architecture. The 11th century brought internal divisions with the fragmentation of the caliphate into taifas—small, independent kingdoms. Following Castilian military conquest of the Guadalquivir Valley, Christian settler activity in the area had its heyday in the 13th century. For the rest of the middle ages, locations in the south of the Guadalquivir valley also developed an identity as a militarised borderland with the Emirate of Granada (the remaining Muslim polity in the territory of the current-day region), which was eventually also conquered in 1492.
Cities like Seville and Cádiz played a central role in Spain's exploration and colonization of the New World, becoming major hubs for trade with colonies in the Americas. By the 16th century, Western Andalusia was the richest region of the Crown of Castile due to increasing agricultural output, although growth possibilities were squandered after 1580. Under the Crown of Castile, the current-day region was largely coterminous with the kingdoms of Seville, Córdoba, Jaén, and Granada. Land ownership became increasingly concentrated in the early modern period. In 1981, in the wake of the push of a regionalist movement that culminated with an overwhelming support to a 1980 referendum, the provinces of Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga, and Seville configured as the standalone autonomous community of Andalusia. Andalusia remains an underdeveloped NUTS 2 statistical region of the European Union.
Prehistory Paleolithic
The presence of hominids in Andalusia dates back to the Lower Paleolithic, with archaeological remains of the Acheulean culture between 700000 and 400000 years old, however the controversial finding of the so-called Man of Orce seems to point to a greater antiquity. The main areas of settlement were the Alto Guadalquivir area and the southern area of Sierra Morena, on the terraces of the great rivers, which were used as circulation axes and food supply areas (hunting and gathering). During the Middle Paleolithic, characterized by the Homo neanderthalensis and the Mousterian culture, there was a climatic recrudescence that led to the use of caves as shelter. Testimony of this are the Cueva de la Carihuela, in Píñar, the Cueva de Zájara, in cuevas del Almanzora and the Gibraltarian caves. The Upper Paleolithic was marked by the retreat of the glaciation and the appearance of Homo sapiens whose habitat became widespread throughout Andalusia. The material culture was characterized by advances in the lithic industry and the appearance of the first manifestations of rock art. Examples of this are the paintings of the Pileta Cave, Ambrosio Cave (in Almería), Las Motillas Cave, Malalmuerzo Cave (in Granada) and Morrón Cave (in Jaén), all of them characterized by their schematism. Particularly noteworthy is the so-called Rock Art of the extreme south of the Iberian Peninsula, called in the Andalusian context Arte sureño ("Southern art"). In the Caves of Nerja located in the town of Maro, municipality of Nerja (Málaga), have been dated some seal paintings that could be the first known work of art in the history of mankind, 42000 years old.
Neolithic
The Neolithic, characterized by a productive economy based on agriculture and livestock and with new samples of material culture such as polished stone and pottery, arrived in Andalusia around the 5th millennium BC. Being introduced by diffusion from the Eastern Mediterranean, the first Neolithic samples are located in the Levante Almeriense.
This period is characterized by the existence of two types of habitat or human settlements: the villages and the caves. The villages were simple groupings of huts with a circular base and walls of adobe or wood, located in river valleys or in more arid areas and whose activity was predominantly agricultural and livestock. The caves, more frequent, were used both as dwellings and for burial. As for ceramics, the cardium pottery and Almagra pottery are characteristic. Some of the existing Neolithic caves in Andalusia are the cueva de los Murciélagos, the cueva de la Mujer, the cueva de la Carigüela, the Cueva del Tesoro and the Caves of Nerja.
Metal Age
During the Metal Age it is characterized by the invention of metal smelting, which was introduced in Andalusia by peoples from the eastern Mediterranean. The introduction of metals in technology meant an important advance in the manufacture of tools for farming, hunting and fishing, as well as for warfare. The specialization in tools was such that the division of labor was achieved, favored by the surplus of production in agriculture and which would cause the first social stratification in different groups. Another of the important changes produced in this period was the development of transport and trade, due to the location of metal deposits and their transport to the areas of the Mediterranean Levantine arc. The Mediterranean became the main axis of trade which caused an intensification of all kinds of relations and a faster irradiation of technical advances and cultural exchanges that will precipitate the entry of Andalusia in the protohistoric phase.
The Metal Age is usually divided into three stages, using as nomenclature the name of the metal used in each of these phases: The Copper Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. In Andalusia during the Copper Age a series of important cultures developed, such as the Megalithic Culture, Los Millares Culture, Bell Beaker culture, Argaric culture. In the Iron Age, with the arrival of the colonizing peoples, the important civilization of Tartessos developed, with which Andalusia entered Protohistory.
Ancient Age
Eastern colonizations, Tartessos, and Turdetania
From the 10th century onwards, the Phoenicians of Tyre exercised hegemony over the rest of the Phoenician cities. Around the 9th century, a colonization process took place with the creation of several colonies and factories in peninsular territory, among them Malaka and Cerro del Villar (Málaga), Gadir (Cádiz), Doña Blanca (El Puerto de Santa María), Abdera (Adra), Sexi (Almuñécar), Cerro de la Mora (Moraleda de Zafayona), among others. These colonists used the Andalusian territory to obtain various resources and for its strategic importance as a forced passage point on the trade route between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. The commercial hegemony of Tyre lasted until 573 BC when, after a thirteen-year siege, it fell into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. With the fall of Tyre, trade between Tartessos and Phoenicia was blocked.
Apparently, Tartessos also maintained commercial exchanges with the Greek Phocians who according to Herodotus were their allies. However, after the battle of Alalia, around 537 BC, the Phocaean trade was also blocked by the Carthaginians or Punics, who around the year 500 BC definitively relieved the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean trade, controlling militarily the Strait of Gibraltar and making inaccessible the penetration of the other Mediterranean peoples towards the Atlantic. Likewise, the influence of the Etruscans, another people commercially present in Tartessos, ended up falling after the rise of Rome. All this caused an irreversible commercial crisis in Tartessos.
From all of the above, it can be said that the Tartessos civilization developed from the Old and Middle Bronze Age, simultaneously with the cultures of El Argar and Los Millares until the 6th century BC when it collapsed. Tartessos extended over most of the Andalusian territory, the Algarve and part of the Region of Murcia, although its main axis was located in the triangle formed by the cities of Huelva, Seville and Cadiz. Its most significant activity was mining and metallurgy (gold, silver, iron and copper), although agriculture, livestock, fishing and maritime trade were also practiced, where it was a strategic point between the Mediterranean and Atlantic routes, key for Phoenician trade with tin from the British Isles.
According to the chronology of the colonizations and the archaeological remains, Tartessos arose fundamentally from the acculturation of the indigenous population by the influence of the Phoenician colonizers, whose phonetic alphabet, according to some is the basis of the writing of the Tartessian language. The burnished grid pottery, with red varnish and the cult to oriental deities such as Astarte, Baal or Melkart seem to indicate this, as shown by the Treasure of El Carambolo and the Temple of Melkart in Cadiz, among others. The contact with the Greeks and the Etruscans also produced an important acculturation that introduced Tartessos in the scope of the most important civilizations of the Mediterranean, becoming the first great existing civilization in the Iberian Peninsula.
Almost all the documentary news that we have of Tartessos are due to ancient Greek authors. They often confuse the historical with the mythical or semi-mythical, with kings such as Geryon, Habis, Norax and Argantonius. Likewise, the Atlantis described by Plato in his dialogues Timaeus and Critias with the capital or city of Tartessos has been frequently identified.
After the fall of Tartessos, the territory of present-day Andalusia came under Carthaginian control. However, as heir to their culture emerged Turdetania, a region populated by the Turdetans, an Iberian people who, according to Strabo:
Parallel to the Turdetans, the territory of Tartessos was inhabited by other indigenous peoples: the Turduli, Bastetani, Oretani and Cynetes. The growing ascendancy of Rome meant that after a long period of Punic Wars, the Carthaginians were finally expelled by the Romans from the Iberian Peninsula.
Roman Baetica
In 218 BC, the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio landed in Empúries to cut off supplies to the Carthaginians. After defeating them in some battles, in 210 BC he was appointed consul, at which time the Second Punic War and the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans began. After the war the Carthaginians abandoned Andalusia and their presence was replaced by that of the Romans, who had to face some pockets of resistance.