Timeline of Iberian prehistory
- c. 1.5 to 1.8 million years Before Present Paleolithic – Tools used by hominids at Orce in the province of Granada
- c. 1 million years BP – Tools used by hominids living near Burgos
- c. 200,000 BP – In the Paleolithic period the Neanderthal Man enters the Iberian Peninsula.
- c. 70,000 BP
- *Neanderthal Mousterian culture.
- *Beginning of the Last Ice Age.
- c. 50,000 years BP – Ancient mtDNA was partially sequenced in HVR region for three distinct Neanderthals from El Sidrón cave near Piloña province of Asturias
- 40th millennium BC
- *Beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.
- *The first large settlement of Europe by modern humans, nomadic hunter-gatherers coming from the steppes of central Asia. When the Ice Age reached its maximum extent, these modern humans took refuge in southern Europe, namely in Iberia, and in the steppes of southern Ukraine and Russia.
- 35th millennium BC – Beginning of the Neanderthal Châtelperronian cultural period, emanating from Southern France.
- 33rd millennium BC – Beginning of the modern human Aurignacian culture in Europe.
- 30th millennium BC – modern humans make way into the Iberian Peninsula, coming from Southern France. Here, this genetically homogenous population, will supposedly develop the M343 mutation, giving rise to the R1b Haplogroup, still dominant in modern Portuguese and Spanish populations.
- 28th millennium BC
- *Extinction of the Neanderthal Man in its last refuge – the west of Iberia.
- *Gravettian culture in Europe.
- 20th millennium BC
- *Solutrean cultural period in Europe.
- *Pre-historic art in the Vila Nova de Foz Côa, one of the biggest sites in Europe.
- 15th millennium BC – Magdalenian cultural period in Europe.
Mesolithic
Neolithic
Chalcolithic