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after the places where their remains were first identified). Europeans of today, however, are not direct descendants of Cro-Magnon man but rather the result of a further 30,000 years of interbreeding, movement, and evolution in particular environments. These movements were accelerated and extended by each advance in human technology, but until food-growing took the place of food-gathering and hunting (an advance which had to await the passing of the Ice Ages), the caves of Gibraltar were as good a place as any to live and better than most. Most of the big horizontal caves were again at sea level, and in the floury earth of their floors man began to leave the pottery, basket work, stone tools, shell amulets, ornaments, metal weapons, and coins which trace his progress.
    When we reach the dawn of history, about 5,000 years ago, Spain was occupied by tribes of people since called Iberians. They came from the northern flanks of the Caucasus, but before that from the Middle East.
     

     
    Their language was of Hebraic origin. The word iber itself derives from eber, meaning "ultimate, beyond" in Hebrew; Iberia is thus "the last land." The Iberian tribe which lived on the mainland opposite Gibraltar was called the Turdetani; and some Spanish scholars claim that this is from an old Hebrew word meaning "region, country." Southern Spain was known to the ancients as Tarshish; and in it there may or may not have been a great capital called Tartessos and a great king called Argantonio. If it did exist, no one has yet found a trace: if it did not, the "city" was probably a symbol used by Greek and Phoenician poets to personify all the wonders and marvels of the far west.
    Tarshish is mentioned several times in the Bible. Jonah met his misadventure with the great fish while on his way there:
     
    But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.—Jonah 1:3
     
    And, as we know, there were whales in the strait Solomon had commercial dealings with it:
     
    For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.—I Kings 10:22
     
    The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents.... —Psalms 72:10
     
    The reference to peacocks and ivory shows that there was a trading link between Tarshish and Africa, and this is not strange, for the Egyptians later sailed right around Africa (it took them three years). The truly revealing reference is the mention of gold and silver, and again, "Silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish" (Jeremiah 10:9), for these coasts had long before Solomon felt the first thrust of the civilizations beginning to flower in the Near and Middle East. The Egyptians began to use gold, silver, and copper very early, and soon after 3000 B.C. they were getting some of it from Tarshish—specifically, from near Almeria and from the Rio Tinto region, which is west of Gibraltar. An Iberian on the Rock, then, tending goats perhaps, must have seen vessels of the most ancient design creeping past, westbound with oil and cotton and blue beads for the natives, eastbound with sheets of copper and silver.
    The Greeks came to share in the trade; and about 2800 B.C. the Minoans, who brought with them and left in Spain a deep-rooted belief of their religion: bull worship. The trade went beyond Spain to England and beyond copper to tin, and soon copper and tin were being melted together to make a new harder and tougher metal—bronze. The Age of Bronze was born close to the Rock, and the Iron Age followed from the same womb, for Tarshish contributed large iron ore deposits, too.
    Several peoples traded past the Rock, but it was the Phoenicians who dominated these western waters for over five centuries and,