Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula is a prominent landmass in south-western Europe, largely isolated from the rest of the continent by the Pyrenees Mountains. It comprises the mainland territories of Spain and Portugal, alongside the smaller political units of Andorra and Gibraltar, and, according to traditional geographical definitions, a small portion of southern France. Covering an area that makes it the second-largest European peninsula after the Scandinavian Peninsula, it is home to roughly fifty-five million people. Its geography, linguistic diversity and long history of cultural interaction have made it one of Europe’s most distinctive regions.

Etymology and Classical Usage

The name Iberia is ancient, and its origin has long been associated with the River Ebro—the Ibros of Greek writers and the Ibrus or Hibrus of Latin authors. Classical geographers such as Strabo noted that earlier historians referred to the land “this side of the Ebro” as Ibria. Pliny the Elder suggested that the Greeks applied the term Hiberia to the whole peninsula due to the river’s importance. The Ebro featured prominently in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BCE which delineated spheres of Roman and Carthaginian influence.
Polybius records that the river’s indigenous name was Ibr, a form considered older than the Hellenised or Latinised forms. The peoples living along the Mediterranean coastal arc from southern Spain to southern France produced a readable script, now called the Iberian script, though its language remains largely undeciphered. The uncertainty surrounding the original meaning of Iber reflects the broader limitations posed by this linguistic obscurity.
Basque linguistic parallels have been noted—ibar meaning valley and ibai meaning river—but these remain unproven connections. Greek geographers adopted Ἰβηρία, a term later used by the Romans, though it was not limited to the European peninsula; they also applied it to another region known as Iberia in the Caucasus. It was Strabo who clearly delineated the peninsula from Gaul by reference to the Pyrenees, establishing a definition closer to that used today.
Roman sources often used Hispania and Hiberia interchangeably, reflecting overlapping geographical and political perspectives. In Latin, Hiberia meant “land of the Hiberians”, derived from the river name. Roman literature contains early references; for instance, Ennius in the second century BCE and Virgil in his Georgics mention the Hiberi. Over time, Hispania became the dominant Roman designation for the peninsula, which under Roman administration was divided into the provinces of Baetica, Tarraconensis and Lusitania. The Romans also used the term Hesperia Ultima to distinguish the far-western peninsula from Italy. In Jewish tradition the name Sepharad came to denote the peninsula.
The modern expression Iberian Peninsula emerged in the nineteenth century, coined by the French geographer Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent. Earlier scholarship had relied on the terms Spanish Peninsula or Pyrenaean Peninsula.

Prehistoric Occupation

Human presence in the Iberian Peninsula extends back more than a million years. Excavations in the Atapuerca Mountains have yielded remains from hominin species dating between 780,000 and a million years ago. These finds have been variously attributed to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis or Homo antecessor.
Neanderthals entered the peninsula around 200,000 BP and developed the Mousterian culture during the Middle Palaeolithic. By approximately 37,000 BP, the Châtelperronian culture, originating in southern France, had spread into northern Iberia. Neanderthals disappeared from the archaeological record around 30,000 BP, shortly after modern humans crossed the Pyrenees approximately 40,000 years ago.
Upper Palaeolithic cultures in Iberia included the Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean and Magdalenian. These cultures are noted for their sophisticated stone tools and the remarkable cave art found across northern Spain and southern France.

Neolithic and Early Farming Cultures

During the Neolithic period, Iberia saw the development of diverse megalithic traditions. The arrival of Early European Farmers—whose ancestry forms a significant component of the modern Iberian gene pool—introduced agriculture, settled communities and new crafts. Maritime cultural influences from the eastern Mediterranean, including the Cardium pottery tradition, reached the peninsula’s eastern shores by the fifth millennium BCE and may have played a role in shaping later Iberian cultural groups.
Genetic studies reveal significant demographic changes during the Bronze Age, including the arrival of groups with Western Steppe Herder ancestry from the Pontic–Caspian region. These migrations contributed substantially to Iberia’s paternal lineages, particularly through Haplogroup R1b.

Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Developments

The Chalcolithic period, beginning around 3000 BCE, saw the emergence of complex societies and the establishment of far-reaching exchange networks linking Iberia to the Baltic, the Middle East and North Africa. Between 2800 and 2700 BCE the Beaker culture, producing distinctive maritime bell-shaped pottery, likely originated in the copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary before spreading widely across western Europe.
The Bronze Age began on the peninsula around 2100 BCE, with major cultural developments by 1800 BCE. The transition from the Chalcolithic Los Millares culture was followed by the El Argar culture in south-eastern Iberia, one of the earliest European societies to exhibit traits of complex, possibly state-level organisation. From this centre, bronze-working technologies disseminated to neighbouring regions, contributing to the Bronze of Levante, the South-Western Iberian Bronze and the Las Cogotas culture.