Other classic authors, as Asclepiades of Mirlia, initially placed the lands of Iberia next to the mythical Tartessos, to the east of a river that could be the Tinto and they denominated Hebrus or Hiberus and, thus, generically Iberians to the peoples of its different tribes. Strabo, in its Geography, gives some clues about the first peoples linked to the Iberian culture would be related to the diffusion in the orb of Tartessos: “ Turdetani are the most educated of the Iberians and they have writing and historical writings in prose and poetry and laws in metric form which, it is said, date back to six thousand years”.
In 573 BC, the invasion of Tire and the Phoenician cities by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, caused on the one hand a Phoenician exodus towards its colonies of Carthage and the West and, on the other, the end of commercial flow. Tartessos end was possibly linked to a great economic crisis that had its origin in the far Mediterranean bounds. Although today there are few certainties about Tartessos what is undoubted is the influence that received from the first Phoenician and Greek explorers and that later would become the development of the Iberian cultures south of the peninsula. Would follow new discoveries, such as the building ruins, possibly temples or palaces and burial mounds, in Tejada la Vieja, Huelva, Cerro de la Cabeza, Santiponce, or, along the middle Guadiana River, the Tamborrio hills, Borreguero and, in 1978, Cancho Roano, besides pieces like the one called Bronze Carriazo, the Treasure of Aliseda or the Lebrija chandeliers. It would not be until September 1958 when Carambolo treasure would be find out in the archaeologic site of that name in Camas, Seville, a fantastic set of twenty-one gold pieces worked in twenty-four carat gold believed to be used in ritual sacrifices. More time was needed to begin to find some clues, scarce and not very explicit, of the culture that surfaced in the peninsular southwest. (“Tartessians also used to trade to the ends of the Estrimnides”).Ĭorroboration, or the will to find physical evidence of the existence of a Tartessian culture, will not come until the emergence of enlightened figures such as the German Adolf Schulten, who, inspired by the archaeological discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld in Troy and Mycenae, tried to emulate them by discovering a lost city in Doñana or at the mouth of the Odiel River, reflecting their researches in Tartessos und Atlantis in 1927.
Ephorus of Cyme, in his Universal History mentions that Tartessos’ bronze was known in Olympia, although its silver was more appreciated Avienus goes further by pointing out, in Ora Maritima, that they trade with the bounds of the known world, in the British Isles: “ Tartessisque in terminos Oestrymnidom negotiandi mos erat”. It is common the mention to the wealth and the trade of minerals. Although not to be misled, myths hide interests, in this case metals that come from the mines of Huelva or through the secret route leading to the distant mines in the lands of Cornwall and Wales.Īt the end of the nineteenth century, Tartessos was no more than that myth although it had echoes of verisimilitude in the classic writings, the stories closest to the mythology trace three lines of characters, the one of Gerion, related to the works of Hercules, one of which was precisely to steal his cattle as narrated by Stesichorus in the Geryoneis and locating the fact in Tartessos while Hesiod places it in Eriteia, Cadiz the one of Norax, son of Hermes and Eritia, as well Gerion’s daughter, credited with the foundation of Nora, in Sardinia and the myth of Habis, transmitted by Gnaeus Pompeius Trogo in Historiae Philippicae et Totius Mundi Origines et Terrae Situs who quotes an older king named Gargoris, whom he claims to have “ invented the art of collecting honey”, in short, myths transmitting humanity evolution from food recollection to agriculture and livestock.Ĭloser to reality is the presence of King Argantonius, about whom Herodotus narrates the friendship between him and the Phocaean Greeks, to the point where, in the face of Persian onslaught in Asia Minor, he offers them help to erect walls or to welcome them in Tartessos.
Ancient Greeks and Phoenicians were fascinated by the myths and mysteries of the unknown lands of the West, the existence of an unknown sea, beyond the columns of Hercules or a garden called Hesperides and a land or city whose name was Tartessos.