The route of Tin: contextualizing Euro-Mediterranean Bronze Age

More on Los Millares: HERE (in Spanish)

This burial custom seems to have been imitated by (pre-)Greeks later on.

Also the Bronze Age successor of Los Millares, El Argar, eventually adopts a clearly Greek burial custom: pithoi, burial in gigantic jars used as coffins.

But the trade connection is still obscure. Apart of a few green glass beads and the fact that Near Eastern good quality and once aboundant tin had to come from somewhere there are not artifacts that can be atributed to trans-Mediterranean trade in either place. Sure that Iberian civilizations enjoyed sicne c. 3000 BCE of aboundant imports from Northern Europe and undefined regions of Africa... but Eastern Mediterranean artifacts, apart of those few beads, are still unheard of.



More on El Argar: HERE (in Spanish)


Western Iberia

But while I don't ignore the SE Iberian context and its striking connections to Greece, my personal focus in rather in the other Ancient Iberian civilization, located in the region of Estremadura, in modern day Portugal.

The culture of Vila Nova de Sao Pedro (VNSP), sometimes also called Zambujal for its main town, is as old as Los Millares (c. 2600 BCE) but it lasts for a lot longer being also contemporary of El Argar. From 2100 to 1900 BCE it becomes the center of the Bell Beaker phenomenon, apparently of trading nature. Its relation with Los Millares seems rather cooperative, even if the cultures are clearly different, and I would say that decission of building fortfications is more related to the instability that between 2600 and 2400 BCE plagues Western and, specially, Central Europe. Nevertheless the fotifications persist even in the "pacific" period of the Bell Beaker culture...


VNSP's origins are unclear but it does seem to be mostly a byproduct of native forces, the same forces that just a few generations after they recieved the concept of agriculture, invented such a succesful funerary model as the dolmen, the same cultures that, seemingly descendent of Magdalenian hunter-gatherers, would build them all around the Atlantic coasts of Europe in what seems a unifying element for the diferent cultures of the Finis Terrae, the End of the World... the place where the Sun sets.

VNSP therefore arises as the first Megalithist civilization. Yet, while dolmens persist, some new funerary types arise: the artificial caves, with parallels specially in SE France, a region that is very much connected to VNSP if we trace the Copper Age exchanges.

Most strikingly for those familiar with the writings of Plato on Atlantis, VNSP has exactly 10 of these "aristcratic tombs": 10 are the kings of Atlantis, according to the Greek philosopher. Obviously this is not the only coincidence: after all, VNSP is the only cvlization "beyond the pillars" that has been documented so far, the oblongue shape of the peninsula fits also with the description of the "island", the fact that the capital city, Zambujal, is on a low mountain is also perfectly in accordance with Plato's description.
But furthermore, recent archaeological research has found that:

(...) Geo-archaeological investigations (in 1986) established that, until the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium B. C., Zambujal was at most 1 km away from a former marine branch. (...) Probably, the bay mentioned above was of fundamental importance for the existence of the settlement, because on the one hand different materials used in Zambujal had to be brought in from distant sites (e. g. amphibolite, ivory, exotic items such as a cowrie snail, but probably also copper) and on the other hand, the produced copper articles had to be bartered. Additionally, the end of the occupation around the transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age seems to have been connected to the disappearance of the bay.  http://www.dainst.org/index.php?id=595&sessionLanguage=e n

Is that "bay" the canal that Plato describes?


Atlantis? Erythia? Atlas and the Hesperides?

I don't just toy with the idea of Atlantis: Greeks had kept some difusse memory of their Bronze Age in form of myths and legends. The Heraklean cycle has some of the most interesting pieces for us, as it is the only one that mentions the Hesperides clearly and the Greeks active in that region.

In his 10th labour, Herakles is sent to fight against a kiing of an island of the Hesperides, Geriones. This island is called Erythia.

In his 11th labour, probably an alternative narration for the same story, Herakles must steal the golden apples to the Hesperides (one of them called Erythia too) and triks Atlas to do it for him.

Atlas is the mythical founding king of Atalntis in Plato's narration, though in other legends, this one is Uranos. Atlas is depicted sustaining the skies... just as some Iberian icons...

Well, in any case we have two or three separate accounts of Greeks beng in the Far West.

We also have those striking cultural parallels between SE Iberia and Greece.

And we have a demand of tin in the Near East. While the peoples of SW Asia may had got easier to import it from Afghanistan, Greeks (and Cretans before them) probably had it a lot easier to bring it from Iberia, where they could also find other minerals at a cheap price: gold, silver, copper, amber, etc.

So the Greece-Iberia-Britain connection must be a fact.


Contextualizing

Let's put it in context: