As rich as the recorded history of Spain is, it all adds up to a mere microsecond in terms of human presence on the peninsula that eventually became known as Iberia. Homo sapiens arrived here during the Paleolithic era, some, oh, 1.2 million years back, give or take – including the last stand of the Neanderthals. And that era of what we now call “prehistory” runs up to the early 3rd century BC, when the powerful North African city-state Carthage started establishing footholds on the Iberian Pe
