Editing Iberian Peninsula (section)

==Proto-history==
{{Main|Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula}}
[[File:Iberia 300BC-en.svg|thumb|Iberia before the Carthaginian conquests {{circa|300 BCE}}.]]
[[File:Escrita sudoeste by Henrique Matos 002A.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.6|An instance of the [[Southwest Paleohispanic script]] inscribed in the Abóbada I stele.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Origin and development of the Paleohispanic scripts. the orthography and phonology of the Southwestern alphabet|first=Miguel|last=Valério|journal=Revista portuguesa de arqueologia|issn=0874-2782|volume=11|url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3339686.pdf|issue=2|year=2008<!--|pages=107-138-->|pages=108–109}}</ref>]]

By the [[Iron Age]], starting in the 8th century BCE, the Iberian Peninsula consisted of complex agrarian and urban civilizations, either [[Pre-Celtic]] or Celtic (such as the [[Celtiberians]], [[Gallaeci]], [[Astures]], [[Celtici]], [[Lusitanians]] and others), the cultures of the [[Iberians]] in the eastern and southern zones and the cultures of the [[Aquitanian language|Aquitanian]] in the western portion of the Pyrenees.

As early as the 12th century BCE, the [[Phoenician civilization|Phoenicians]], a [[thalassocratic]] civilization originally from the Eastern Mediterranean, began to explore the coastline of the peninsula, interacting with the metal-rich communities in the southwest of the peninsula (contemporarily known as the semi-mythical [[Tartessos]]).{{Sfn|Cunliffe|1995|p=15}} Around 1100 BCE, Phoenician merchants founded the trading colony of Gadir or Gades (modern day [[Cádiz]]). Phoenicians established a permanent trading port in the Gadir colony {{Circa|800 BCE}} in response to the increasing demand of silver from the [[Assyrian Empire]].{{Sfn|Cunliffe|1995|p=16}}

The seafaring Phoenicians, [[ancient Greece|Greeks]] and [[ancient Carthage|Carthaginians]] successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over several centuries. In the 8th century BCE, the first [[Colonies in antiquity#Greek colonies|Greek colonies]], such as Emporion (modern [[Empúries]]), were founded along the Mediterranean coast on the east, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians.

Together with the presence of Phoenician and Greek epigraphy, several [[paleohispanic scripts]] developed in the Iberian Peninsula along the 1st millennium BCE. The development of a primordial paleohispanic script antecessor to the rest of paleohispanic scripts (originally supposed to be a non-redundant [[semi-syllabary]]) derived from the [[Phoenician alphabet]] and originated in Southwestern Iberia by the 7th century BCE has been tentatively proposed.<ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://ifc.dpz.es/recursos/publicaciones/36/49/05ferrer.pdf|journal=Palaeohispanica|volume=17|year=2017|<!--55-94-->issn=1578-5386|title=El origen dual de las escrituras paleohispánicas: un nuevo modelo genealógico|first=Joan|last=Ferrer i Jané|page=58}}</ref>

In the sixth century BCE, the Carthaginians arrived in the peninsula while struggling with the Greeks for control of the Western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago Nova (modern-day [[Cartagena, Spain]]).