Prehistoric Europe: Encyclopedia II - Prehistoric Europe - Iron Age

Prehistoric Europe - Iron Age

Though the use of iron was known to the Aegean peoples about 1100 BCE, it didn't reach Central Europe before 800 BCE, giving way to the Hallstatt culture, an Iron Age evolution of the culture the Urn Fields. Probably as by-product of this technological superiority of the Indo-Europeans, soon after, they clearly consolidate their positions in Italy and Iberia, penetrating deep inside those peninsulas (Rome founded in 753 BCE).

Around that time the Phoenicians, benefitting form the disappearance of the Greek maritime power (Dark Ages) founded their first colony at the entrance of the Atlantic Ocean: in Gadir (modern Cádiz), most likely as a merchant outpost to covey the many mineral resources of the Iberian Peninsula and the British Isles.

Nevertheless, from the 7th century BCE onwards, the Greek nation recovers its power and starts its own colonial expansion, founding Massalia (modern Marseilles) and its Iberian outpost of Emporion (modern Empúries). This last thing wasn't done before the Iberians could reconquer Catalonia and the Ebro valley from the Celts, separating physically the Iberian Celts from their continental neighbours.

The second phase of the European Iron Age is defined particularly by the Celtic La Tène culture, that starts near 400 BCE, followed by a large expansion of this people into the Balkans, the British Isles (where they assimilated druidism) and other regions of France and Italy.

The Celtic debacle under the expansive pressure of Germanic tribes (originally from Scandinavia and Lower Germany) and the forming Roman Empire, in the last century BCE, is also that of the end of Prehistory properly speaking; though many regions of Europe remained yet illiterate and therefore out of written history for many centuries yet, we must place the boundary somewhere and this date, near the start of our calendar, seems quite convenient. The remaining is regional prehistory (or in most cases proto-history) but no longer European prehistory as a whole.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Iron Age", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki