The Iberians and Stonehenge

Iberians arrived in the British Island about 300000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic Age (or Stone Age). This period is also known as Prehistory. 
The Iberians had dark hair and they weren’t tall. In the Stone Age they practiced hunting. 
In the Bronze Age they learned how to practice agriculture, designed temples, began exploiting the surface’s mines for gold and tin. They built trade harbours and set up trade routers.
Stonehenge is a Neolithic site in England. Stonehenge is probably one of the most knowable monuments in the world and is a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It's one of the most popular touristic destinations and it is also a place of pilgrimage.

It is located on a hill in the middle of a vast plain. It is formed by giant erected stones known as megaliths. Nowadays these stones tell us interesting things about our ancestors' life. The construction of Stonehenge remains a mystery: Stonehenge is also known as the "Giant's Dance" and some think that the stones were even erected by the devil, other think that Stonehenge was created as an astronomic observatory. Other think that it was a temple dedicated to the gods. This site is definitely tied to something sacred because it survived for thousands years.In recent years this site has been threatened by the construction of roads near the monument.

Iberian religion isn’t known very well, but in the latest years its knowledge and interpretation were improved. The most important sources are archaeological discoveries and written texts. Main discoveries are the “ex voto”, votive objects in bronze, stone or ceramic. The Iberians practiced the cremation of the dead, and the ashes were deposed in urns, which were then interred with a funerary kit.
Celts imposed to the Iberians their language, their government and their traditions. So, their society was organized on a Celt model: they were divided in clans, and a set of clans formed a tribe, ruled by a king. 
The society was clearly divided into three "functions": the sacred and legal, the warrior and the productive ones. But Celts adopted the Iberian writing system and the alphabet, and in some cases they merged with them.  Though  there is a considerable amount of Iberian inscriptions that allowed the deciphering of the alphabet, the Iberian language (or languages​​), continues to be poorly understood. What we can certainly say  is that it had neither Semitic Indo-European origins. Some scholars consider this to be an ancestor of the Basque language, because Iberian language has a few similarities with it.
The Iberians were absorbed in the Roman state between the end of the III century b.C. and the end of the next century. Despite the intense Romanization they were submitted from the first decades of Roman domination, Iberians preserved their own language, their own alphabet, some of the gods of their religion and many of their customs and traditions since the age of Augustus.

                                                     Iberian mausoleum (VI century b.C.)




Sources: 
www.wikipedia.com
www.gioianasti.it
www.bbc.com

Gioia and Camilla