In Spain, searching for lost civilisation of Tartessos
Archaeologists work at the Casas de Turunuelo Tartessian archaeological site in Guarena.
For centuries, the lost civilisation of Tartessos has been shrouded in mystery. But 3,000 years after ourishing in the Iberian peninsula, its secrets are slowly emerging thanks to the meticulous work of archaeologists.
Viewed by historians as Western Europe’s oldest civilisation, Tartessos has long been considered a “mysterious” puzzle, but little by little the pieces “are falling into place”, archaeologist Sebastian Celestino Perez said.
A member of the Spanish National Research Council, he has led the excavation team since it began working at the site in 2015 where last year they discovered ve stone faces.
Mr. Celestino Perez said at the time it represented a “profound paradigm shift” in their understanding of this ancient civilisation and why it suddenly disappeared after 400 years.
“It was the rst time that human gures from the Tartessian world had been found,” said the bespectacled 66-year-old, who described the site as being in “excellent condition”.
A society that emerged out of the contact between the indigenous Iberian population and traders either from Phoenicia or Greece, Tartessos ourished from the ninth to the fth century BCE in an area extending from Extremadura to the southern Andalusia region and an adjoining area in Portugal.
In recent years many theories have been put forward to explain the disappearance of Tartessian civilisation, including severe drought or recurrent ooding, both of which would have left the land unworkable, forcing the inhabitants to leave.