Iberians: Characteristics And Culture Of These Pre-Roman Peoples
Before the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by the Romans, there were mainly two cultures in this region, which left an important architectural legacy in what is now Spain: the Celts and the Iberians.
The Iberians were a group of people who lived in what is now Andalusia and the Mediterranean coast, as well as parts of the center of the peninsula. This culture was the descendant of the Tartessian and Almerian, with Phoenician and Greek influences and is considered the most culturally relevant before the arrival of Rome.
In this article Let’s see who the Iberians were how they organized themselves socially, what their cities were like and how they lived.
The Iberians were a group of people who lived in the pre-Roman Iberian Peninsula Until relatively recently, it was believed that the Iberians were, along with the Celts, the first inhabitants of what is now continental Spain, although it has been demonstrated that they were actually the descendants of previous cultures that developed in the south and the east of the Iberian Peninsula, including the Tartessian and Almeria cultures.
We owe the name of the Iberians to the Greeks of Classical Antiquity. They were Hellenic merchants, writers and soldiers who, when exploring the peninsula, baptized with this name the people located mostly on the Iberian Mediterranean coast, distinguishing them from those who lived further to the center, to the north and on the Atlantic coast, who were the Celts.
The iberos They did not form a uniform culture, one cannot even speak of an Iberian people as something homogeneous or of an Iberian race There are many peoples that made up the Iberian group at its maximum extent, while some were related to the others, but their idiosyncrasy prevents them from bringing them all together in the same Iberian culture, since they had different ways of living and even spoke and wrote. in various ways.
Based on it Two large groups are distinguished: the Andalusian Iberians and the Levantine Within the Andalusian group we have the Mastienos (Murcia), Bastetans and Bástulos (Almería and Granada), the Oretanos, the Curetes, the Etmaneos and the Turdetans (banks of the Guadalquivir). In the Levantine group we have the Layetans, Cosetans and Ilercaones (Catalonia), the Ilergetes and Edetanos (central Ebro Valley) and the Contestans (Valencian Community).
History of this group of pre-Roman ethnic groups
The first reference to the Iberians is from the 4th century BC. C, specifically in the text “Ora maritima” (The maritime coasts) by the poet Rufo Festo Avieno, who takes a tour of all of pre-Roman Hispania and explains what that land was like up to a thousand years ago at his time. Avieno refers to the Iberians as the people who inhabited the Mediterranean coasts of the peninsula, although it should be said that there is also evidence that they populated southern Spain and part of France. The poet considered them a more civilized people than their Celtic neighbors.
It is known that there was an ancient Iberian period, around the 7th century BC, and another considered the classical period, which would go from the 5th century BC to the 3rd century BC, the 5th and 4th centuries BC. C. are the moment in which Iberian culture reaches its greatest splendor. The Carthaginian dominion, during the 3rd century BC, puts an end to the period known as classical Iberian beginning the second stage in which they would receive influences.
The end of Iberian culture came with the Romanization of the Peninsula, which began with the victory of the Romans over the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War. More than the disappearance of this culture, The Iberians came to an end when their society dissolved They were losing their social independence and, also, their distinctive cultural features, integrating over time into the extensive ethnic mosaic that was classical Rome.
The Romans were not the only foreign people with whom the Iberians established contact. In addition to the Greeks, we have the brothers of the Carthaginians from the extensive regions that made up Phoenicia in the times of the Iberians, such as Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine. Due to their foreign contacts, there is no doubt that they must have received influences from non-peninsular cultures, so there has always been the problem of determining exactly what is pure Iberian culture and what influences they are.
The Iberian society
As we have mentioned, the Iberians do not constitute a culturally homogeneous group and this is also reflected in their social structures. The Andalusian Iberians and the Levantines presented great differences in the way their society was organized and, although in a much more subtle way, there were also differences within the two large groups.
Andalusian Iberians
The Andalusian Iberians (so called even though Andalusia did not yet exist), who are suspected of being older than the Levantines, They had a very stratified society At the top was the noble class, economically and politically very powerful, whose wealth and power has been evidenced in the more than luxurious remains of trousseau and burials that they have left for later.
There were free men and people who worked for the nobles. There was the dominant upper caste and the rest, who were linked to that class through a client system. Within this system was the upper middle class, made up of artisans and craftsmen from the city, and a lower middle class, made up of miners, farmers and ranchers. At the base of the social pyramid were unfree men, that is, foreign slaves and mercenaries, usually of Celtic origin.
Before the Andalusian Iberians, the Tartessian culture existed, considered its direct predecessor. Tartessos was dissolved as a united state around the 6th century BC, giving rise to various local monarchies of a hereditary type. As time went by, the development of Iberian cities and the various internal power dynamics meant that their kings ended up ruling over several cities, which were governed by magistrates appointed by themselves. The defense of the cities was entrusted to mercenaries.
Levantine Iberians
In Levantine Iberian society it seems that there were fewer differences between social classes In some cities the government was administered by a council of elders that acted as a senate, although it is seen that, in moments of political and military tension, leaders were imposed and all citizens were involved in the defense of the city. As time went by, the Levantine social model became more similar to the Andalusian one.
The warriors were an important social extract and were one of the few, along with the nobles, who received burial. Aristocrats and soldiers received great tributes when they were buried, providing them with all types of trousseau and outstanding clothing. We have one of the great proofs that the Levantine Iberians luxuriously buried the powerful classes with the case of the Lady of Elche sculpture of an Iberian woman well dressed with all kinds of decorations that indicated her high social status.
The Iberian towns: how did they live?
Initially, Iberian people lived in tribal communities. The Iberian tribe was a social structure made up of people related to kinship ties, having a common ancestor that could be real or supposed. That is to say, although in many cases they were all family, others could believe in the existence of a man long before them who was attributed to have been the founder of a lineage or a caste that could well be pure legend and mythology.
But as time went by, these towns began to organize themselves around cities, a social and geographical structure that entailed the implementation of new types of ties, very different from those applied in previous tribes. Arriving at this stage, The tribal structure evolves into a purely urban society, with the city being the basic nucleus of the most developed Iberian society
Not all Iberian cities were the same nor were they built in the same way. Those that were located on the shores of the Mediterranean or were close to many roads, which usually coincided with prosperous areas suitable for trade, were very open cities and, as they made great profits, they had sumptuous buildings. This is the case of the Andalusian cities, with imposing megalithic constructions and that were great commercial centers, with mining and great fishing activity, being one of the richest areas of classical Europe.
These cities had high population density and seem to have had places where goods were exchanged They had public squares whose function was identical to that of the forums in Roman cities, something quite striking that allows us to know that among the Iberians, at least those who lived in cities, there was a public consciousness materialized in the form of a market. Families would have their prized objects and goods in their homes, but they could also sell and buy manufactured goods.
But in addition to homes and spaces for commerce, The cities had defense structures, generally in the form of hills and plateaus These types of structures were more common in the Levantine region and had to be built in response to the general climate of uncertainty, restlessness and insecurity due to being geographically closer to the rest of the continent.
Economy
The Andalusian Iberians and the Levantines also distinguished themselves in the way they exploited resources. There were economic differences between these two large groups, attributed mainly to differences in their social structure. In the Andalusian area, wealth was largely owned by the ruling class, while in the Levant there was a more equitable distribution although we should not think that it was a fully egalitarian society.
The Iberians worked the land. Their agricultural activity was mainly the extensive cultivation of olive trees and vineyards, which are believed to have been introduced through their contacts with the Phoenicians. They also grew cereals, although there were differences depending on the area, with more of this type of crop growing near the rivers, especially in the Ebro, the Segura and the Guadalquivir. Among the fruits they also grew were pomegranates, cherries and apples.
As for livestock, the Iberians exploited all types of animals, among which horses, sheep, bulls, oxen and donkeys could not be missing. They also hunted, although it was a more common practice when the momentary needs of the population had to be met.
In addition to agriculture and livestock, the third most important economic activity was mining and metallurgy His lands were very rich in minerals, including gold and silver, as well as copper, iron and lead. These people learned to work metals through the Celts and the Phoenicians and with them they made weapons and tools to work the land.
Lastly, we have commerce. The Iberians established multiple trade routes with the people of the time and, to make exchanges fairer and more agile, they adopted currency, originally of the Greek type but they also minted their own. Thanks to this, they were able to establish stable prices for the products to be exchanged, avoiding misunderstandings and abuses in transactions.
Iberian writing and language
One of the aspects for which the Iberians are well known is that they had their own quite developed writing system. It was a system halfway between alphabetic and syllabic (semi-syllabic) writing There were two variants, in accordance with the cultural differences between the Levantine Iberians and the Andalusians. Thanks to the existence of bilingual Iberian-Latin coins, it has been possible to identify the signs of the Levantine Iberian alphabet. They also used the Greek alphabet.
The language, or rather, the Iberian languages, are a matter of great academic debate. Experts have been able to find out how they were pronounced and how they were written thanks to the work of archaeologist Manuel Gómez-Moreno, but they have not been able to decipher them. There are many remains of Iberian inscriptions throughout southern and eastern Spain, but it is not very clear what they mean.
Iberian is classified as a Paleo-Hispanic language which in itself is not a family of languages but rather an umbrella term to refer to the languages spoken in Iberia before the arrival of the Romans, without necessarily all of them being related to each other.
The hypothesis has been considered that Iberian could be related to Basque, and that ancient Aquitanian could have been the more or less direct descendant of this language, since it is believed that their phonetics were very similar and that they shared certain words.
This hypothesis is not shared by the majority of linguistics. In fact, it is considered that although it could be true that Iberian and ancient Aquitanian had similar phonetics, that would simply indicate that one influenced the other, not that they are part of the same group of languages or that one is a different language. dialect of the other. They could have altered their phonetics, vocabulary and grammar by simple interaction, a phenomenon known in linguistics as Sprachbund.
Religion and Iberian cults
In the Iberian culture there are rituals similar to those of the Mother Earth cycle, typical of cultures that still depend heavily on agricultural activities, livestock and grazing. This divinity is compared by the Greek geographer and historian Strabo as a cult to the goddess Diana, who, although it was not exactly that deity to whom they paid homage, they did believe in a divinity with the same powers.
The bull was an animal to which the Iberians worshiped greatly and that they related to the earth goddess as to divinities of the sky. This animal was taken as a very versatile symbol, used for many types of rituals, in addition to other sacred animals such as lynxes, vultures and wolves. The fact that the bull was so important to the Iberians has raised the hypothesis that they could have been related to the Talayotic people of the Balearic Islands, since this culture also worshiped the bull.
Sacred rituals were celebrated in temples built at some distance from towns and cities. The cults used to coincide with agricultural cycles and, especially, with the summer solstice As for funerary rituals, they used to cremate their dead, depositing their ashes in urns that they placed in a tomb. The Iberians believed in the afterlife, judging by how luxurious the tombs of the aristocrats were and how they were decorated.
Sculpture
Many archaeologists consider that the art of the Iberians was the richest and most elaborate of those that existed in Iberia before the arrival of the Romans. Most of the sculptures that have been found from these towns come from sanctuaries and burial places. The sculptures usually represented warriors, fantastic and sacred animals, such as the Bicha de Balazote in addition to representing nobles in the place where they were buried, such as the Lady of Elche and the Lady of Baza.
As time went by, their sculptural style became more sophisticated, with Greek influences and it is believed that they may also have received Cypriot, Hittite, Etruscan and Ionian influences. But despite the great elaboration of their sculptures, Iberian painting and ceramics are not so important, although some remains of these two types of arts have been found.
