Continental Europe Unveils a Lost Bronze Age City
There’s nothing quite so romantic as the idea of digging up a lost civilization no one had previously known about. It happens to archaeologists all the time — in fiction. But in reality most of the “lost civilizations” of the past have been found, or so we tend to believe.
The truth is that there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of unexplored archaeological sites that scientists have been digging up from satellite photos (Google Earth is a popular research tool). But until someone can get out to these sites and dig them up we don’t know what is there or how old it is.
Spanish archaeologists recently disclosed the extent and antiquity of a fortification found near Murcia that they have dubbed La Bastida (that site is in Spanish). Science Daily and other Websites picked up the story, which offers fascinating and teasing insights into Bronze Age culture in southeastern Spain.
La Bastida is currently dated to about 2200 BCE but what is most significant about the location is that it was a large city for its time (the oldest known city in Continental Europe) and that it appears to have been built with engineering knowledge and technology from the eastern Mediterranean region (probably related to Minoan culture and knowledge).
La Bastida means “The Bastide” or “the Fortified Town”. Bastide is commonly applied to planned fortified towns in medieval France. These fortified settlements were used to open up and claim wilderness territory in Languedoc, Gascony, and Aquitaine. The Bastide was typically built in a grid pattern based on old Roman city designs; this made taxation and administration relatively simple, and of course engineering was easier because the streets were predictable in length, shape, and use.
La Bastida also has a grid layout and yet it is two thousand years older than the Roman civilization which is credited with building planned cities on a large scale. While it would be notable for the grid pattern to have developed locally the theory is that it was imported from the eastern Mediterranean region. But this city was no mere frontier outpost. It boasts large, wealthy houses and a huge pool. People of means and worth lived here alongside the humble.
La Bastida arose during the height of Minoan Civilization, which lasted from Circa 2600 BCE to 1600 BCE, when the devastating volcanic explosion on the island of Thera is believed to have wiped out the people of Crete (the heart of Minoan civilization). This catastrophic event probably occurred somewhere around 1627 BCE – 1600 BCE.
This was a critical period in European and Mediterranean prehistory. In Europe the Tumulus Culture arose; it was characterized by a new burial custom in which the deceased were interred in kurgans (burial mounds). The successors of the Tumulus Culture (some 800 years later) were the people of the Urnfield Culture, which is deemed the source of later Celtic Culture. The Celts were for several hundred years the most advanced people in central and northern Europe.
Egypt may have felt some of the impact of the Thera event but this was a period of warfare between the North and South kingdoms. The Hyksos still controlled northern Egypt and the southern dynasty was gradually wearing them down. The Hyskos would be driven out of Egypt by about 1550 BCE.
Although La Bastida was not a small outpost it does appear to be close to if not on the frontier that demarcated the extent of Minoan influence and culture. The Cycladic Civilization — which arose on the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea — essentially vanished (overwhelmed by or perhaps absorbed into Minoan Culture) around 2000 BCE after lasting about a thousand years. Only the island city-state of Delos would survive into historical Greek civilization as a significant power.
The timing of La Bastida‘s founding thus coincides with the ascendancy of Minoan culture and it may lend credence to some of the theories about sources for the Atlantis story. Some archaeologists argue that Atlantis may represent an Iberian civilization that vanished more than 4000 years ago. Could Iberian colonies have broken away from Minoan civilization before or after the Thera eruption?
The Atlantis story — as related by Plato — says that Athens fought an ancient war with the Atlanteans. Plato’s dating for the war seems implausible (supposedly 9,000 years before his time — Athens is only known to have been inhabited since about 5,000 BCE). Some people have argued that Plato’s source (a translation of an Egyptian story) might have misinterpreted “9,000 years” for “900 years”. The conversation Plato writes about supposedly occurred around 500 BCE — or about 900 years after Athens started to become a powerful center of Mycenean Civilization.
The research from La Bastida says the city was abandoned around 1600 BCE — about the time of the Thera event. That’s a little too early for a war with Athens but what if Athens repulsed an invasion from the west that resulted from the collapse of Minoan Civilization?
We can ask many questions but we will be long pursuing the answers. The reality may be more mundane than the imagination paints the past but we are slowly, bit by bit, digging up pieces of history that have been lost to us for thousands of years. One can only wait for the next major discovery but at least La Bastida shows us that we have much left to learn about how civilization arose and spread across the Mediterranean world.