dolmen

Spain During The Neolithic Period

Millions of years ago, long before history was written in books, Spain was a very different place from the country we know and love today. Imagine for a moment that you have stepped back in time, to a society where even what we would consider to be basic essentials had to be worked hard for., where technology was taking its first faltering steps towards a more civilized world. Welcome to Neolithic Spain.

Sometimes called the New Stone Age, the Neolithic period refers to the tail end of the Stone Age which ending when humans began to work with metal in the Bronze Age. Around 4,000 BC, a group of people came to Spain and began the working on the land. These were Spain’s first agriculturalists, bringing farming and livestock culture to the Iberican Peninsula, and elsewhere in the country. Unlike earlier inhabitants of Spain, the Neolithic people were geared for a more settled lifestyle, living in communities and not moving to place to place to hunt like their predecessors. We do not know what language these people spoke, nor can anyone confirm where they came from – although it is likely that they travelled over the sea from North Africa.

Because we know so little about the origin and ways of life of the Neolithic people who inhabited Spain all those years ago, we are forced to draw conclusions from that which they left behind. Archaeologists have been able to piece together information using artefacts including stone tools, pottery and even some buildings.

In Andalusia, Galicia, Catalonia and Extremadura, a number of Neolithic structures called Dolmen still stand today , although only assumptions can be made as to their purpose. The popular theory, due to the fact that human remains were discovered nearby, is that the imposing stone buildings were a type of tomb. Constructed from enormous rocks, we can only imagine why and how these early people chose to build the Dolmen and what significance they might have had.

As science continues to advance and the traces of the Neolithic period are examined, we may still find out more about these farming communities., though the smallest details of their daily life are probably, and sadly, lost forever.