Entry 2: Ancient Legacies
Barton's A History of Spain: Ch 1
Even an overview of our knowledge of prehistoric Spain so brief as this sends the imagination running rampant. The migration of Cro-Magnon man into the Neanderthal territories of Paleolithic Spain reads like a novel... the ruddy-skinned Neanderthal stands watch on the highest hill, shepherd before shepherds over his tribe, when he sees in the distance a small band of strange and similar creatures...
Does the Neanderthal society consider itself "other" than animal, or "more" than animal, as we tend to now?
No matter, he sees this new creature, which he could not know as Cro-Magnon, but only as somehow different, something removed from kith and kin, but not entirely. He stalks the beast. It, too, walks upright - two legs, and two arms, as no other creatures have. None, but he and this new one. Yet, this one is something more - he takes in the entire world and recreates it at will. It is imperfect, but it is what Neanderthal cannot do.
Did these two struggle? At first, it seems they must have - scenes from a centuries-long battle are strangely obvious, floating in vibrant crimson, while thoughts of how our existence might differ, were the Neanderthal to have dug his spear just a little deeper, flicker past the mind transfixed on the could-have-been. But then, it surfaces again: Cro-Magnon man created art. Surely then, Cro-Magnon knew himself to be different from the animals... Perhaps Neanderthal saw these small acts of creation, and drew from these, if nothing else, that the world was created - that it was not but is. Perhaps he thought himself in the presence of god(s) - perhaps there was no struggle at all.
I guess that is unlikely, but one needn't look so far as the superiority of Cro-Magnon's physiology and diet to conclude that Neanderthal stood no chance. Against a creative society... Neanderthal had no more change of defeating Cro-Magnon than did a pack of wolves. After all, it wasn't called The Art of War for nothing... There are few forces more frightening than that of the creative mind set to destruction.
I imagine that the reaction of Neanderthal to the creative powers of Cro-Magnon must have looked something like that of the First Foundationers to the Mule and the Second Foundation in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series...
Another point of interest is the slow spread of metallurgy on the Peninsula. The blame for this is most likely, I think, to fall on the shoulders of the population differentials between the exporting Mediterranean societies of Attica and Phoenicia and the importing Iberian Peninsula. A sparse population would find the great leap in production afforded by the new technology without value without the population to consume it - rotting meat serves no purpose. With the introduction and advancement of agriculture, however, the population would swell, accounting for the late but emphatic adoption of the technology.