[Prehistory - 219 BCE] Pre-Roman Iberia and Lusitania

Before Portugal was a country, before its language was spoken, even before the name ‘Portugal’ existed, the land was an ancient stage for a story thousands of years in the making. Our journey begins in the deep past, in an era of stone and spirit, and ends on the cusp of an invasion that would change the Western world forever: the year 219 BCE. Long before any king ruled or any border was drawn, the people of this land moved mountains. Travel to the sun-drenched plains of the Alentejo, and you will find the Almendres Cromlech. Here, over 7,000 years ago, communities worked together to quarry, transport, and erect more than 90 colossal standing stones, some taller than a man, arranging them in silent, patient circles. We don’t know their names or the precise words of their chants, but we can feel their purpose. Were these lunar calendars? Sacred sites to honour the dead? Places of power to ensure the fertility of the earth? The stones keep their secrets, but their very existence tells us of a society sophisticated enough for massive, coordinated labour, a people deeply connected to the cosmos and the turning of the seasons. These were the first farmers. The shift from a nomadic hunting life to a settled agricultural one was the most profound revolution in human history. It happened here. Small, permanent villages sprouted, built of wood and earth. The days became governed by the rhythm of planting wheat and barley, of tending to the first domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle. Pottery, a miraculous invention, allowed them to store grain and water, to cook new kinds of meals. Life was still hard, a constant struggle against drought and disease, but for the first time, there was a true sense of home, a place to return to, a legacy to leave in the earth. Then, a new glint appeared in the firelight. Around 3000 BCE, people discovered how to smelt copper. It was soft, but it could be shaped into daggers and axes far superior to stone. This was the dawn of a new age, an age of metal. The true leap forward, however, came with bronze. The people of this land discovered that by mixing their southern copper with tin, a metal traded from the distant north, they could create a hard, durable, and beautiful alloy. The Bronze Age had arrived, and with it, a new kind of society. Bronze was not for everyone. The resources and skills needed to produce it were rare, controlled by a new class of powerful chieftains and warrior elites. A chieftain’s gleaming bronze sword was not just a weapon; it was a billboard of his power, a symbol of status that separated him from a common farmer with a wooden spear. This region, a crossroads of Atlantic sea lanes, became a vital hub in a complex European trade network. Amber from the Baltic, tin from Britain, and ivory from Africa may have found their way into the hands of these Iberian lords, exchanged for the precious copper and silver mined from their own hills. As centuries passed, a new metal, harder and more plentiful than bronze, began to spread: iron. The Iron Age brought with it a new people, or at least a new and powerful cultural influence. We call them the Celts, though they were not a single invading army but rather a tapestry of tribes who shared similar languages, art, and ways of life. They settled across the northern half of the peninsula, and their culture mingled with that of the existing peoples to create something new: the Castro culture. To survive in this world, you lived in a *castro*. These were fortified settlements, clinging to hilltops and strategic bluffs like stone crowns, offering a commanding view of the surrounding valleys and coastlines. Thick, circular stone walls, sometimes several layers deep, protected the community within. Inside, life bustled within dozens of circular stone houses with thatched conical roofs. The air would have been thick with the smell of woodsmoke from a central hearth, the constant bleating of sheep, and the murmur of a Celtic-influenced tongue. A person’s life in a castro was tied to their clan and their land. They dressed in rough wool tunics, fastened with an iron or bronze pin, and cloaks of leather to ward off the Atlantic damp. Their diet was simple but hearty: stews of beans and vegetables, porridge, bread made from acorns, and a coarse, fermented beer. They were skilled metalworkers, crafting everything from sickles for the harvest to the intricate gold torcs that adorned the necks of their chieftains. Their gods were forces of nature: Endovelicus, a god of health and prophecy worshipped in the mountains, and Ataegina, a goddess of rebirth and the underworld, whose symbol was the goat. These were a proud, fiercely independent people. Greek and later Carthaginian sailors who traded along the coast wrote of them with a mixture of fear and respect. They were described as formidable warriors, preferring guerrilla tactics in their rugged terrain, fighting with a short, stabbing sword called a *falcata* and a small round shield, the *caetra*. They were the Lusitani, the Gallaeci, the Celtici—a mosaic of tribes who knew no master but their own chieftains. But the world was shrinking. Down on the southern coast, Phoenician and Greek traders had established small posts, bringing with them the alphabet, wine in clay amphorae, and new ideas. They were followed by a more formidable power: Carthage. By the late 3rd century BCE, the brilliant Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca had carved out a powerful empire in southern Iberia, hungry for its silver mines and its manpower. His son, Hannibal, inherited that ambition. In 219 BCE, from his capital of New Carthage, he laid siege to the city of Saguntum, an ally of a distant, rising power named Rome. The Lusitanian warrior on his hilltop, watching the seasons turn, would not have known the name Hannibal, nor understood the politics of the Mediterranean. But the fall of Saguntum was the spark that lit the Second Punic War. It was the event that would finally turn Rome’s full, terrifying attention westward. The drums of a distant war were beginning to beat, and soon, their echo would reach every castro, every valley, and every soul in this ancient land. Their world was about to be broken open.